/lit/ - Literature

plenty. nobody's even solved the trolley car problem yet

>intro to trolley problem class (Phil 301)
>professor whisks past the lever question without even asking the class what they would do
>he quickly gets to the second conundrum with a fat man and a bridge
>spends 40 minutes explaining how disgusting fat people are, how they're a drain on society, how they insult on our aesthetic sensibilities, all while rattling off long-memorized utilitarian calculus on the many ways that removing fat people from society would result in net happiness
>he then asks the class whether they would push the fat man off the bridge
>everyone raises their hands
Just another day in philosophy class haha

>>12585919
I didn't mean you were oversimplifying the trolley you pseud, I meant you were oversimplyfing the very situation you presented.

Legal repercussions aren't the issue, the utility of the principle of consent is in how it influences all of our interactions which eachother and provides more stability and security for everyone involved. I guess I shouldn't expect people who thoughtlessly reject and mischaracterize utilitarianism to have any genuine insight.

Assuming 'neutrality' of considerations in the trolley problem, you are left with numbers, consent and the fact that you're in the immediate position to intervene. In this particular situation, it is ostensibly a vey rare occurrence and there is no possibility of obtaining consent, so I think it would be reasonable to default to saving the most people. If you could obtain consent, it's muddier because they are all capable of consent and none of them have to die. Does not-consenting to non-intervention cancel out the consent for it? I'm not sure... I am sure the intervenor couldn't rationally be accused of murder either way. The argument of 'let things run their course' ignores that you are part of the causal chain. I would stick with saving the most people, as I am not the one tied them up and forced the situation in the first place. It is that person who is responsible for all violations, I would merely be making the best out of an awful situation.

Woolworths gave me nightmares. I dreamed always that I was in a car driving up and down the aisles and black cats were all staring on the shelves. Every time you went in you heard: beep, beep—at the registers; cra-tch!—when they yanked out trolleys stuck together; hamanahromananang—just that sound you heard all around you because there were so many people talking at once. Start at the vegetables. That was her rule. Then you got to go through all the fun stuff like cereal. We spent ages in the vegetable aisle. She kept sending Lucy to go and check different places. Why do they always move everything! Just check your list. She just makes stuff up every time we come here. Aw well we need mushrooms. Well stop thinking so much and follow the list and it won’t be such a drama. She’s so annoying. So I picked up the hose and squirted the lettuce with it because I knew I’d have to Put that down! and Come here now! and Stand next to Luke on the other side of the trolley. All she did was yell. And Lucy just walked behind her not saying anything. It’s obviously how you’re supposed to behave but far out. Lucy never said anything. She just walked quietly. Why should I have to act like that? I just walked with Luke at the trolley. She couldn’t complain then. Luke picked up a packet off the shelf to show how it had Crash Bandicoot on the logo and straight away. Put that back! I heard it even before she said it. Like he was going to just put it in the trolley? And then what? All she would do was take it out and put it back on the shelf. I gave the finger to her back. Luke was freaking out. Lucy saw but she didn’t say anything. We had to stop because she was counting the prices up in her head. Luke made her lose count she said. Yeah Luke. Luke apparently. She tallied up all the numbers on an imaginary board in front of her. If she just wrote down the prices on the shopping list as we went we wouldn’t have this problem. Like I was ever going to say that to her but. Lucy was good at maths she probably even knew. She wasn’t going to say. We had to make room for a nice family to come through while we waited. Their Mum had a blazer on and bright blonde hair that she dyed. She was talking on the phone while her kids rode on the front of the trolley. That’s how Justin’s Mum looked whenever I saw her at school. If she came and got him from the pick-up zone everyone said Oi Justin your Mum is so hot aye. Everyone wanted to fuck Justin’s Mum. One weekend I had go to out to Target with her because I can’t be left home alone. I saw Justin in the dressing room waiting area. He was with his Mum too and I sat with him. Then Mum came out with the same pink singlet on and said the clothes didn’t fit and we had to go. I could tell she was ugly. It was obvious Justin didn’t want to fuck her. Would you fuck my Mum? Just imagine saying that.

Woolworths gave me nightmares. I dreamed always that I was in a car driving up and down the aisles and black cats were all staring on the shelves. Every time you went in you heard: beep, beep—at the registers; cra-tch!—when they yanked out trolleys stuck together; hamanahromananang—just that sound you heard all around you because there were so many people talking at once. Start at the vegetables. That was her rule. Then you got to go through all the fun stuff like cereal. We spent ages in the vegetable aisle. She kept sending Lucy to go and check different places. Why do they always move everything! Just check your list. She just makes stuff up every time we come here. Aw well we need mushrooms. Well stop thinking so much and follow the list and it won’t be such a drama. She’s so annoying. So I picked up the hose and squirted the lettuce with it because I knew I’d have to Put that down! and Come here now! and Stand next to Luke on the other side of the trolley. All she did was yell. And Lucy just walked behind her not saying anything. It’s obviously how you’re supposed to behave but far out. Lucy never said anything. She just walked quietly. Why should I have to act like that? I just walked with Luke at the trolley. She couldn’t complain then. Luke picked up a packet off the shelf to show how it had Crash Bandicoot on the logo and straight away. Put that back! I heard it even before she said it. Like he was going to just put it in the trolley? And then what? All she would do was take it out and put it back on the shelf. I gave the finger to her back. Luke was freaking out. Lucy saw but she didn’t say anything. We had to stop because she was counting the prices up in her head. Luke made her lose count she said. Yeah Luke. Luke apparently. She tallied up all the numbers on an imaginary board in front of her. If she just wrote down the prices on the shopping list as we went we wouldn’t have this problem. Like I was ever going to say that to her but. Lucy was good at maths she probably even knew. She wasn’t going to say. We had to make room for a nice family to come through while we waited. Their Mum had a blazer on and bright blonde hair that she dyed. She was talking on the phone while her kids rode on the front of the trolley. That’s how Justin’s Mum looked whenever I saw her at school. If she came and got him from the pick-up zone everyone said Oi Justin your Mum is so hot aye. Everyone wanted to fuck Justin’s Mum. One weekend I had go to out to Target with her because I can’t be left home alone. I saw Justin in the dressing room waiting area. He was with his Mum too and I sat with him. Then Mum came out with the same pink singlet on and said the clothes didn’t fit and we had to go. I could tell she was ugly. It was obvious Justin didn’t want to fuck her. Would you fuck my Mum? Just imagine saying that.

>>12554854
Virtue ethics of course: it is internally the most consistent, externally the most comprehensive, and the least affected by contrived examples such as the trolley problem. All other positions are only rigid, tunnel vision corruptions of virtue ethics.
>Virtue maximizes happiness because true happiness is reached through virtue
>Virtue is exactly that which can be willed as a universal law without contradicting itself, because it is the natural inclination toward unity

>>12493248
Superhero comics still tend to revert to the idea that being a hero is just a matter of being given extraordinary power by the universe and having enough of a moral compass to choose beating the shit out of mobsters and terrorists over doing literally anything else with said extraordinary power, which is pretty basic wish fulfillment.

Super-heroes often have practice montages, and difficult trolley-problem-style decisions to make, but for the most part its a matter of fetishizing the vague idea that justice means punishing the wicked.

He never wrote a sonnet : what a pleb!
Do you even into pentameter?
To you, like those from Cape Town to Maghreb,
I say go back that way, and re-enter.
A simple form : the surest sign that /lit/
Were dead is if, to lurk or to crosspost,
There came a brainlet who did not know it,
The mastery of which a child could boast.
Although : the trolley problem most would test,
To me it poses no internal strife.
With five I'd illustrate, "unstressed and stressed,"
To one, the lever pull, and save the life
Of poetry, which grows all the more rare
In simplest forms : and sadly, the most fair.

>>12460327
This image is honestly a shit way to visualize the trolley problem because he already has his hand on the lever

So I have thought about this trolley problem a lot, but I always come back to the same answer.
You see the trolley bearing down on the five people. You want to save those people, so you take the action that will reroute the trolley so it doesn't run over them.
The fact that a different person died, is irrelevant. It's not a consequence, it's a happenstance. Did you kill that one person? No, you saved all those other people. You're exempt from any wrongdoing by the very nature of the situation. So the idea that pulling the lever is somehow more 'interventionist' and wrong than not pulling the lever, is made irrelevant, because all these things could happen anyways with or without you. If you chose not to pull the lever, you're similarly not at fault for letting those people die. They would've died anyway. Your actions don't have any consequences in this situation.

>>12417105
>How would an AI following Asimov's three laws of robotics deal with the trolley problem?
I mean, that's kinda the premise of OP's initial question.

>>12415128
How would Witty go about solving the trolley problem?

>>12413366
i don't like that you use the term trolley problem.why not say choosing between charybdis and scylla?this is /lit/ you faggot.

>>12414525
that's not the trolley problem, you are not sacrificing yourself, you are sacrificing some random dude without asking

>>12413366
>because inaction does not cause harm
How does it not? And the first law is clear on inaction.
>>12413387
> it would not be able to handle the paradox and just freeze
That would be the "realistic" solution, but the trolley problem isn't about realism, so imo that dodges the question more than it answers it.

How would an AI following Asimov's three laws of robotics deal with the trolley problem?

>>12391192
From a thread about moral dilemma books earlier:

Q: How is it complex? Choosing to kill the individual makes you a murderer. letting the five die leaves you a bystander

A: Objectively, it is less moral to let more people die. While the situation is not caused by you, there is a certain societal standard for responsibility that demands you do what is best for the species. The “grey area” of killing one to save many is not really grey at all, it’s a necessity brought about by your implicit societal responsibility to preserve the species. That’s why wars are fought. That’s why terrorists are killed. Some death is necessary for the preservation of the species, and if you are put into a situation like the trolley problem, you must own up to your responsibility.

Q:Justify that more humans means a net benefit for the human race

A: More humans means they (most likely; this cannot be completely certain given the circumstances) have the potential to produce more offspring. These children will grow up and produce more. By exponentially growing (let’s say that every person saved has two children, so on and so forth) they increase possibilities for developing benefits for humanity. This is not to say that the one person you “save” by not pulling the lever can not also have offspring who reproduce so on and so forth, but the numbers would ultimately pale in comparison to what could have been saved given you DID pull the lever. It is all too pessimistic, I believe, to think that all 5 human lives would not, collectively, produce either themselves or through their offspring, benefits equal to or greater than that of the 1.

>>12390569
Objectively, it is less moral to let more people die. While the situation is not caused by you, there is a certain societal standard for responsibility that demands you do what is best for the species. The “grey area” of killing one to save many is not really grey at all, it’s a necessity brought about by your implicit societal responsibility to preserve the species. That’s why wars are fought. That’s why terrorists are killed. Some death is necessary for the preservation of the species, and if you are put into a situation like the trolley problem, you must own up to your responsibility.

>>12231438
The trolley problem is basically the tension between logic and ethics. Weininger makes his assertion without solving that problem. Maybe killing is necessary. But its not ethical in any way.

There's something poetic about the term "policy lever" and how well it corresponds with the famous trolley problem.

When people are first introduced to the trolley problem, they always ask for more information: "How did they end up there?" "Do I know any of the people on the tracks?" "Is one of them a murderer?" etc. Ultimately, a simple but well-meaning soul will decide to pull the lever, because, all other things being held equal, five is more than one. The problem with their answer is that "all other things being held equal" is not baked in, it is just as much an assumption as "that one is my grandmother." In an experiment involving mice and the same basic dilemma, 84% of test subjects pulled the lever.

This is also the issue we face when it comes to policy decisions. We know a little about the world, and assume that we can predict the ultimate effect of a policy based upon that information. "People are poor? Give them money." "Drugs are killing people? Give them Narcan." "Workplace accidents have increased? Regulate and monitor them." Beyond the first-order effect of any policy, however, is a second, and a third, and a fourth, and so on, that we often uncover only after our band-aid solution has led to catastrophe. The poor fall back into poverty without helping the economy, the opioid abuser overdoses yet again, the company cannot afford mandated safety training and shutters. 84% of people, however, simply cannot refuse to take an action broadly perceived as moral when they are put on the spot and it is trivial for them to do so.

The universe is probably a static, Aristotelian space where given enough information and processing power, one might calculate all future events. That is God's domain; we humans are trapped in the realm of heuristics. Is not "I know that I know nothing" the best one? Why stand in for God? As it is, lever-pulling appears baked in to our species. If it leads to our ruin, alas, but it was meant to be.

84% willingly select one out of six (~16%) of people to die. That, my fellow non-pullers, is us.

>>12189718
If we take the ethical choice to serve the maximum amount of people (let's not get into why this is true because this is the trolley problem), then you can only do this when you have maximum power. The logical choice is the ethical choice.

>>12179775
He was solving the trolley problem.

>>12134278

Golly gee. Looks like foundational text in applied ethics The Bible (CITATION) can't deal with the trolley problem

>>12078451

I believe each person is made in the Image of God and is equally significant and equally valuable regardless of anything they do, do not do or might do.

I suppose you would consider this "retarded" but I don't find that particularly insulting.

The universe is not starring anyone. I am not a minor character in your story. The trolley problem is ridiculous. Geniuses are equally useful to mankind as the comatose elderly.