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All 10 questions were variants of the trolley problem. The problems were also poorly formed which is what made answering them difficult, not the actual moral di

by seles 17y ago

All 10 questions were variants of the trolley problem. The problems were also poorly formed which is what made answering them difficult, not the actual moral dilema. For example, in the real trolly problem it is clear that you really only have two options flip the switch or not, it is hard to imagine there are other alternatives. But in many of these problems, it is hard to believe there is not a better option available, even though the problem states "but the only way..."

dkarl 17y ago
Yes, they were quite poorly formed, which renders the study entirely pointless. The idea behind these problems is to collect people's intuitive reactions to simple, clear situations. If the problems are so poorly formed that intuition simply rejects them, the exercise is useless, except as a study in human frustration. (Perhaps that's the point? It would explain the poor UI design.) Several situations present you with the option of causing one immediate and fairly certain death to prevent several more distant, much more speculative deaths. You can't predict the path of a boulder down a mountain. A boulder that would be stopped by one person would be unlikely to kill five. The man driving the injured people to the hospital actually has little idea how quickly he needs to get them there to save their lives. The certainty presented in the problems is so unreal that they might as well have been posed in an entirely abstract way in the first place.
ismarc 17y ago
I would actually have to disagree. They are different situations cast around the trolley problem. For me, the settings of each situation actually played a large amount in the weighting. Trying to not reveal much, in my opinion, the lunch line guy wasn't wrong at all while the box lady was, even though the situations are virtually identical (sacrifice one to save many).
kylec 17y ago
Yeah, I stopped when it asked me to choose the number of people that would be intentionally infected with HIV that would obligate the doctor to poison the patient/murderer. There were just so many holes (break doctor/patient confidentiality, how would the doctor know how many people would get infected/etc)

by seles 17y ago

dkarl 17y ago

Yes, they were quite poorly formed, which renders the study entirely pointless. The idea behind these problems is to collect people's intuitive reactions to simple, clear situations. If the problems are so poorly formed that intuition simply rejects them, the exercise is useless, except as a study in human frustration. (Perhaps that's the point? It would explain the poor UI design.) Several situations present you with the option of causing one immediate and fairly certain death to prevent several more distant, much more speculative deaths. You can't predict the path of a boulder down a mountain. A boulder that would be stopped by one person would be unlikely to kill five. The man driving the injured people to the hospital actually has little idea how quickly he needs to get them there to save their lives. The certainty presented in the problems is so unreal that they might as well have been posed in an entirely abstract way in the first place.

ismarc 17y ago

I would actually have to disagree. They are different situations cast around the trolley problem. For me, the settings of each situation actually played a large amount in the weighting. Trying to not reveal much, in my opinion, the lunch line guy wasn't wrong at all while the box lady was, even though the situations are virtually identical (sacrifice one to save many).

kylec 17y ago

Yeah, I stopped when it asked me to choose the number of people that would be intentionally infected with HIV that would obligate the doctor to poison the patient/murderer. There were just so many holes (break doctor/patient confidentiality, how would the doctor know how many people would get infected/etc)