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Serious question: Am I the only person that thinks that the trolley problem is completely useless? It feels like any kind of conclusion you come to is never act

Serious question: Am I the only person that thinks that the trolley problem is completely useless? It feels like any kind of conclusion you come to is never actually applicable in the real world, because the real world always contains variables and extra conditions that negate the premise. Edit: Other than it being a starting point for a discussion about the 'values' we assign to moral choices.

flir 3y ago
It's useful to me in that it shows, along with the transplant problem, that Utilitarianism Is Insufficient. But it's philosophy, it doesn't have to have applications to be interesting.
- PlunderBunny 3y ago
  Thanks - I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms re: utilitarianism. As discussion of 'self-driving cars' ramped up towards the end of the last decade, I read many opinions that this was going to require (or demonstrate) a machine being forced to 'solve' the trolley problem in the seconds prior to an accident, but even then it seemed silly to me - it might have looked like the trolley problem on the surface, but otherwise had no relationship.
wizofaus 3y ago
The "starting point for discussion" is surely the intended and expected value of the trolley problem. But it's probably reasonable to point out that the moral/ethical decisions that we most often have to make on a day to day basis almost never involve having to decide who lives and who dies - which we should be profoundly grateful for!
PlunderBunny 3y ago
So I actually made an effort to read the Wikipedia entry [0] (I should have done that before shooting my mouth off here) and it's supposed to be about the moral emphasis we place on an active decision vs a passive one - do you passively let the trolley proceed towards the five babies, or intervene and direct it to the distinguished scientist instead? In that case, I think I understand what it's trying to get at, and how this example (the GTP Trolley) fails to capture that. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
lolinder 3y ago
This isn't really the trolley problem, because the trolley problem is meant to illustrate that most of us seem to consider allowing something to happen to be less unethical than causing something to happen. This version says "you must push one of two buttons and pick which person/people die". You are an active participant either way, which means most people just fall back into pure utilitarianism, which is boring. The real trolley problem says "you have the option to flip a switch and send the trolley towards one person, but if you do nothing then it will hit X people". You either passively allow X people to die or actively cause one person's death. Utilitarianism would say that the choice is obvious, but many people choose to do nothing. That choice is interesting, and illustrates something about our psychology that this simplified version can't get at.

flir 3y ago

It's useful to me in that it shows, along with the transplant problem, that Utilitarianism Is Insufficient. But it's philosophy, it doesn't have to have applications to be interesting.

PlunderBunny 3y ago
Thanks - I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms re: utilitarianism. As discussion of 'self-driving cars' ramped up towards the end of the last decade, I read many opinions that this was going to require (or demonstrate) a machine being forced to 'solve' the trolley problem in the seconds prior to an accident, but even then it seemed silly to me - it might have looked like the trolley problem on the surface, but otherwise had no relationship.

wizofaus 3y ago

The "starting point for discussion" is surely the intended and expected value of the trolley problem. But it's probably reasonable to point out that the moral/ethical decisions that we most often have to make on a day to day basis almost never involve having to decide who lives and who dies - which we should be profoundly grateful for!

PlunderBunny 3y ago

So I actually made an effort to read the Wikipedia entry [0] (I should have done that before shooting my mouth off here) and it's supposed to be about the moral emphasis we place on an active decision vs a passive one - do you passively let the trolley proceed towards the five babies, or intervene and direct it to the distinguished scientist instead? In that case, I think I understand what it's trying to get at, and how this example (the GTP Trolley) fails to capture that. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

lolinder 3y ago

This isn't really the trolley problem, because the trolley problem is meant to illustrate that most of us seem to consider allowing something to happen to be less unethical than causing something to happen. This version says "you must push one of two buttons and pick which person/people die". You are an active participant either way, which means most people just fall back into pure utilitarianism, which is boring. The real trolley problem says "you have the option to flip a switch and send the trolley towards one person, but if you do nothing then it will hit X people". You either passively allow X people to die or actively cause one person's death. Utilitarianism would say that the choice is obvious, but many people choose to do nothing. That choice is interesting, and illustrates something about our psychology that this simplified version can't get at.