/lit/ - Literature

depends on my mood tbh
ain't doin shit on a monday

Switch the cart and then switch back and then switch a third time.

No deaths, cargo reaches destination

Only option tbh

The correct answer is to let destiny have its way and thereafter butcher everyone present at the time of incident on the trolley as retribution for the dead.

>>6854986
well... could this be seen as asking if I would rather even know about it (the imminent death of one side of the track) in the first place? because if I did know about it, i would probably pull the switch. but if i could chose to not even know about it in the first place and just let the "multiple" people die, i would do that.

Depends on the context.

Classical trolley problem, 5-v-1: Switch.
Modified trolley problem, 5-v-1, where '1' denotes your mother: Don't switch.
Modified trolley problem, 5-and-the-fatty, push or not to push the fatty to save the five: Obviously push, if we want to be consistent relative to our choice for the classical trolley problem

That's about it.

>>6854986
Correct answer: Turn 360 degrees and walk away

Realistic Response:

WTF I do? Jesus Christ! *Flips switch back and forth several times* *Doesn't know which way lever sends train what direction* I cant make decisions! Cowers against lever in shock until its all over.

>>6854986

I'd always argue, everything else held equal (which is of course the real impossibility of the scenario) to pull the switch to save the five. Its a shitty circumstance but the moment one realizes they have the autonomy and power to affect the outcome, the responsibility is upon them, either to be responsible for one death or five. Inaction is decidedly a choice, albeit one with a separate intention than leaving the track consciously in place for the five. The issue I have is that the 'inaction' seems almost like Akresia in greek thinking, a sort of non-self-control stemming from an unwillingness to undertake the task or to 'become less moral'. I respect the Kantian view though, that killing may have some categorical attribute which renders it always a bad action.

Also sorry OP I don't have any of the radical loop-de-loop images of this.

>>6855004
I am curious to know how exactly you think train tracks work

Switch immediately after the forepart has past the railing, the trolley will remain stuck.

Does this not bother anyone though, unironically. Putting full effort into anything other than preventing the deaths of others means putting more importance on these things than on lives so everything I do is an opportunity cost of lives lost which I bear responsibility for. Why shouldn't j be ashamed of this if I am a normal, non-le-edgy person who naturally doesn't like the idea of others dying/suffering hugely

>>6855085
You think the responsibility would trigger you to action, but in fact the shock of the situation would leave you just as helpless as the people tied to the tracks.

>>6855101
>In reality, I actually completely agree with you that the emotional impact of the situation would lead to a non-decision through shock or panic for myself and for most people. I offer my above answer in the classical 'intro to phil and ethics course' infinite deliberation time scenario.

>>6855101
Not if you've already thought about it for hours on end

Trolley problem bullshit is why I hate philosophy after it abandons metaphysics.

Like who could give a flying fuck about moral philosophy?

>>6855150
>Like who could give a flying fuck about moral philosophy?
People who give a flying fuck about moral philosophy.

>>6854986
its incomplete information, if you go on the assumption that each of the individuals lives are values equally the answer is obvious

Here's a good representation of our own lives.

>>6855165
Time is a flat circle.

>>6855156

Human interaction can be boiled down to chimp tier behaviour with here and there a diamond in the rough who can restrain himself a bit better than most of his fellow men. The latter needs the threat of a stick or a gun to act morally.
That's all. To think your way, logically, into acting right is absolute fucking bullshit

>>6855010
lmfao

>>6855180
Woah woah, look who's on board, gentleapes. It's the cognitive behavioral scientist!

>>6855180
And that's moral philosophy wrapped up. Thanks friendo

>>6855191

Yes. So?

>>6855191

Not necessarily behavioural science.
Hobbes and many others would agree with that point.

>>6855130
>>6855138
Clearly they want to prepare us.

>>6855180

So you're using logic, to argue that logic isn't useful for debating topics involving and relating to logic?

If I were to give you five dollars today or forty tomorrow, wouldn't one logically move to take the forty tomorrow? All action involves decision, it's in the nature of what it means 'to act'. Examining how we make decisions and attempting to make 'better' decisions is also an apelike behavior, it's what made them dominant. Moral philosophy is merely one step further, examining what standards we use when we judge our actions as good or bad.

>>6855210
for the inevitable.

>>6855176

You mean a disc?

>>6855210

It's true, when I encounter a train and a lever, I will not panic, but instead, will rush to Discuss the merits of the action slowly before eventually spilling my spaghetti everywhere, throwing the lever, throwing up, and running away. But hey, no one said heroes have to look good.

Nothing. I tied them to the rails in the first place, why the hell should I care?

>>6855219

Morality is restraint. And what we should restrain ourselves from is, of course, contextual.
The less a power encroaches upon us, the more we see animalistic tendencies in us bloom. The sexual revolution is a perfect example of what happens when you decide to just let it happen (inb4 /r9k/ ). But many other examples can be named.

If we were both Muslims, there would be the Shariah and that'd be the end of most discussions.

Moral philosophy happens in vacuum. Mostly after a culture went through a massive crisis. Like it did in Greece after the tyrannies or in our case with modernity ( which is a crisis in itself ).

>>6855072
Reddit

I don't switch the tracks and the 5 people get run over. But then i go over to the single guy and kill him too.

>>6855089
Because helping people in real life is harder than pushing a lever - and we're too lazy to go and do what is required

>>6854986

If someone tied these people to train tracks then they all deserve to die. Let the tram one over the first group then switch the tracks so the next tram runs over the stragler. Or switch the tracks half way to crash the train with no survivors.

>>6855276
4chan version: "Post boobs or get fucking squashed."

>>6854986
switch it and then try to pull the one guy off the tracks as fast as I can.

Now if the one person was an attractive woman, would sparing her life be impressive to her, or would she be disgusted that she just saw you let five people die?

Posting what I have, OP

>>6856430

>>6856435

>>6856440

>>6856444
That's it

>>6856444
the stuff of Nyquill-fueled nightmares

>>6856293
You have to be at least 18 to browse this site.

>>6855249
>Morality is restraint

>>6854986
Depends.

Are they jews? Dealbreaker tbh

>>6856440
kek

>>6854986
My stance is that it's limited; why only the option of puling the lever? Also how fast is it going? What about the context; are people watching, if there are laws what are they and can you go to jail for pulling the lever? I think that no matter what you do it's meaningless because morality is a spook, if it pleases the unique one then I could pull the lever and quickly free the single person or I could sabotage the tram (are there people on the tram?). Ultimately I would probably do nothing unless there was somebody who is of value to me on one side because having them alive pleases me.

>>6856440
how is that a problem for a hedonist though

>>6856601
meme
>>6856623
it's a meme you dip

Hit the switch: save your wife/husband/most beloved
Don't hit the switch: save 5 strangers, but one of them is qt and you have a 35% chance of falling in love with her as a result of saving her life

What do??

>>6856733
>most beloved
>one of them is qt

have you thought this through my fair mr. dandan

>>6855222
A disc on the backs of 4 elephants, who are standing on the back of a giant turtle?

Is reality discworld?

>>6856720
>Stirner is a meme on /lit
So what? Are you seriously discarding his ideas simply because of him being a meme. Your loss.

tbh the trolley problem made me gave up on having actual discussions in philosophy class

The depths of stupidity the trolley problem revealed in people honestly shocked me. People saying that human life is valuable, but they wouldn't save the 5. The reason being that 'You can't reduce the value of human life to numbers!!!!" or 'I refuse to participate because I'm only guilty if I'm involved' or my favorite 'I won't save them because it doesn't matter, and that means I'm objectively morally right because nothing matters so it's right to do nothing.'

I make fun of /lit/ for having shitposters who couldn't logic their way out of a cardboard box but the 3dpd experience was a thousand times worse

>>6857006
They can be discarded since they are worthless; Nietzsche is more valuable, congruent, and logical and close ended.

D E V I L I S H
E
V
I
L
I
S
H

>>6857041

Thought experiments are terrible if they're presented as some kind of test of values and not a way of exposing, for examination, processes in reasoning, moral, epistemic, ontological, etc.

I really dislike that they're used as a debating ground, and not as preface to debates.

I dont understand, what is the correct answer assuming I know nothing of anyone tied on to the tracks?
What if the top track was a rich bastard philanthropist who constantly donates to orphanages and to cancer research and if he does it all goes to his son who couldn't care less about that kind of stuff while the 5 guys are plebs that live paycheck to paycheck and just go zombie mode throughout their life. How do I know whether picking one or the other won't make the world a worse place?

>>6857152
You don't so you don't factor it in. Remember that and hopefully you won't have an existential crisis next time you make a serious decision.

>>6857152
See, this is what the trolley problem is supposed to do. You've been teased into revealing some of your own opinions about the world.

For example, I can tell you're probably some manner of consequentialist. You have a framework of what you believe is 'better' or 'worse' and you think it is good to make the world a 'better' place, with the ends justifying the means.

But there are people who claim that it is ALWAYS badwrong to sacrifice one to save many, regardless of the consequences, regardless of who is involved, regardless of anything but the sense of whether they are responsible (of course they usually deny responsibility for acts of omission)

Thought experiments force people to think about their own thoughts instead of just muddling about with unexamined biases and spooks that they aren't even consciously aware of.

I just had a thought...

What if this question gets asked around for one reason and one reason only; the asker needs to hire a new 'master track switcher' at the train yard. He knows that hobos try to commit suicide by laying on the tracks all the time and wants to find out how a potential 'master track switcher' would respond to a typical everyday dilemma.

>>6856440
I think this would be funnier without anyone on track a.

>>6857056
Except he added nothing to egoism

Everything that happens its the will of god/existence, so do whatever brings you more lulz. It will be fate.

>>6857078

>>6854986
>what's your stance?
I side-step it, but it's really how I think--I don't consider it a moral dilemma, but a matter of preference.
I neither put those people on the track nor did I send the train toward them--no ethical responsibility to intervene.

If we gonna slum in muh structure studies feels ethics, I'd probably be pants-shitting scared and try to save them all, in vain. Then feel bad that they/he died, but not responsible for it.

>>6855150
*tips edge

>>6854986
>implying anyone on 4chan ever needed a lever to derail anything

>>6856489
Cool rebuttal faggot. Do you also make that face while taking up a fat one up the ass?

>>6854986
>There’s an out of control trolley speeding towards Immanuel Kant. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits Jeremy Bentham instead. Jeremy Bentham clutches the only existing copy of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Kant holds the only existing copy of Bentham’s The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Both of them are shouting at you that they have recently started to reconsider their ethical stances.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lesser-known-trolley-problem-variations

>>6855165
it's funny because in this context the lever doesn't do anything

>after a few thousands years of philosophy it's still unable to solve something as simple as the trolley problem

Shows how useless philosophy is tbh

>>6857728
Then give us the answer you fucker.

>>6855004
?

>>685500
what?

>>6854986
constantly pull the switch back and forth to give the illusion of indecisiveness until it breaks

then there's nothing you can do, you tried

>>6857728
Philosophy solved it generations ago. The problem is that lots of people are still stuck on pre-Utilitarian philosophy.

You pull the lever, killing one person to prevent the death of five.

>>6857728
It is solved tho. Read "Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris.

>>6858139
>not throwing the lever halfway, hopefully jamming the mechanism/derailing the trolley
at the very least it sounds better after the fact than "i decided who should live and who should die"

>>6858146
>atheism
thanks but no thanks tbh such incongruent thought would be synonymous with spiritual cuckoldry if such a thing existed

>>6855072
Shut the fuck up Reddit

Splat the five.
Overpopulation is a real problem friends. Think of your environment and housing markets.

>>6858305
>he fell for the overpopulation meme

>>6858305
>overpopulation
only if they're shitskins

>>6854986
Would the trolley stop if there was a significant barrier? What if I threw myself in front it rather than engaged the problem?

>>6855085

If there is one person on track A, and one person on track B - what do you do?
If your answer is nothing, are you culpable for your inaction?

>>6858330
>>6856440

oh.

>>6858326
I feel like if I'm prepared to kill anybody in that situation, I wouldn't be able to live with it afterwards. So I guess the full answer I'm giving is switching the trolley to the single person and throwing myself on the track as well so that they don't have to die alone, to express the unbearable nature of the decision I just made. Really, that's the general choice in life, who to hurt? And as a sentient creature, I'm forced to play that game, but it doesn't mean I have to live with. Ultimately, it's a tragedy and the hand which puts it into motion must always become victim to it in the end. In other words, if I'm prepared to make a decision regarding the life and death of someone else, the only moral thing to do is to also subject myself to the consequences. I think all other options are hypocrisy.

>>6858365
its not if you genuinely dont care though, you stay true to yourself by pulling or not pulling the lever

>>6858372
But I do care. And I think most people do as well in the end.

>>6857695
Isn't that the point?

>>6857685
>ayy lmao ur gay XDD

>>6855004
I'm sorry, but what?

>>6854986
>tap lever back and forth
>Multi-track drifting

>>6856447
I wait until the trolley runs over the 5 people on the train tracks and then I push the fat guy off the overpass.

>>6858516
Wrong. You ignore the fat guy, and jump on the roof of the trolley and ride that fucker over the people on the tracks.

>>6858582
Or I push the fat fuck onto the trolley, jump on top of him for cushioning, ride that motherfucker over the other motherfuckers, and then push the fat fucker in front of the trolley when I'm done.

>>6858589
Good idea but I'd push the fat guy behind the trolley so the ride can go on and get to the next junction in the never ending cycle of trolley problems

>>6858606
Damn, that's true.

The fact is that you are interrogating or torturing the single guy. So you should kill all five of his teammates as punishment for him.

>>6854986
Read this book OP and you'll never have moronic morality problems anymore.

>>6858649
>reading sam harris

>>6858655
>not reading one of the most important philosophers alive today
Stay mad STEMfag

>>6854986

How the fuck can anyone be so retarded as to not pull the lever?

>hurr if I pull it I become responsible for a death

You're already responsible you idiot. You're in a position where you decide what happens in the future. Either you decide that the train runs over 1 person or you decide it runs over 5 people. How these decisions are related to whether your arm moves a lever or whether your arm remains stationary is completely irrelevant. The whole lever business is pretty much a red herring.

>>6857241
>frogposter
>Stirner
Yuck

>>6858705

Responsible to whom?
Why is death bad?
Why do you think lives have a cumulative worth?

Someone should edit Stirner's face onto everything, including the trolley.

>>6860365

>it is le moral to save the 5 meme

Seriously when did this place get so fucking Reddit. You don't know anything about these people. For all you know the 5 people set the whole experiment up, anf when you rescue them you will become the next loner on the other track for the next game.

>le lives of the many outweigh the few

Jesus fucking Christ just go back to >>>r/undergraduate

Anyone have the "MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING!" one?

I've read the thread and no one has actually said what the answer is. Anyone?

>>6856435

>>6860479
wonderful

>>6857728

Pick up a Philosophy textbook sometime, kid. The ethics chapter is full of trolly problems, with solutions in the back.

>>6855165

Would be more accurate if the lever switched the track off into a brick wall.

>>6858199
>>6857728
>tbh
>tbh
>tbh
Also, its been "solved" thousands of times

>>6855004

>>6860805
can't handle the banter ey lad?

>>6858514
>>6860515
>>6856430
>multitrack
>>6858666
>most important philosophers alive
>most important philosopher
>alive
>most important
>alive
be this wrong

>>6858705
read >>6857691

>>6858784
Yeah i agree man you're completely right and _____fucking filtered you fucking retarded faggot

>>6854999
>>6855044
>>6855088
>>6855199
>>6855222
>>6856444
>>6856733
>>6857677
>>6858199
>>6858311
>>6858655
>>6858666
>>6860300
>>6860644
>>6861977
>so.
>many.
>gets.