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What should matter is how many lives are lost and how many are saved. But the trolley problem shows that in practice we care more about whether we were the one
by RationalDino 3y ago
What should matter is how many lives are lost and how many are saved.
But the trolley problem shows that in practice we care more about whether we were the one to throw a switch than the cost in human lives of our decision.
- Incipient 3y agoWe had a class of about 30 engineers nearly give an arts ethics professor a nervous breakdown. The entire class went the obvious choice of flipping the switch to kill the one person. She just couldn't get her head around how we all had no issue. Pretty simple, 1<5, and taking no action has no material difference to taking an action. It's a choice either way.
- RationalDino 3y agoPerfect! My favorite line of research involving this is using the trolley problem to get at hidden moral biases that we normally wouldn't admit to ourselves. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/given-the-choice-liberals-would-rather-kill-whitey https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/given-the-choice-liber...