/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7128667]

Hey /lit/,

I asked my friend this and he gave me your standard answer, that of saving 5 people. But I'm curious what you guys think? Are you familiar with the trolley problem?

It basically goes as follows:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?

I actually believe it's best to do nothing, because once you act you take up responsibility for the outcome.

[Anonymous No.7128689]

>>7128667
i think its better to do nothing because im not a utilitarian and also dont assign numerical value to human life

[Anonymous No.7128692]

>>7128689
Right? I asked my friend the same thing.. would it matter then if it was instead of 1 person 4 people? 4 vs 5? And he seemed distraught and he didn't give me a quick answer then...

I think that's so hypocritical.

[Anonymous No.7128698]

>>7128667

>Are we familiar with the trolley problem
Fucking lurk more, and at least have the decency to post the good version

[Anonymous No.7128700]

No matter what I do, there's gonna be people bitching at me afterwards for not picking "the right decision".

[Anonymous No.7128703]

0/10

[Anonymous No.7128736]

it goes back to that quote: sometime inaction allows evil to rise thing.

I have a mindset where I think nothings perfect. sure there might not be a right answer but are you really going to work away from that situation and live normally the day after, knowing you could have changed something? maybe u learnt the dude was a doctor, or maybe the group had someone you know?

My idea is the word ain't perfect, its ugly yet beautiful. You have to make your choices, your sacrifices. you miss out on your kids stage play but whilst working, you get the means to provide food or take your kid somewhere. you tried your best, asked a parent for the video.

so I would definitely make an action. Flip a coin? try to shout to them? pull the lever backwards and forwards. either way im not walking out mentally unscathed.

[Anonymous No.7128745]

I'm gonna run with OP's argument that acting means taking responsibility for the outcome, but extend it to where anyone that desires to interfere at all is a flaming hypocrite that then dooms others through their inaction at all points in their life, as they have accepted the moral responsibility that they must help others.

People are told that they must ACT in order to save someone, whether it be making the conscious decision to not touch the lever, or by pulling it (or pushing the dude off the bridge). What if you aren't simply standing there, but are 100 yards away and you must make a supreme effort to get there for the sake of that ACT. Are you still responsible?

Consider also the situation in which you are on the other end of the world, and you are fully aware that the trolley's going to get there and kill somebody, regardless of whether you ACT or not. Is it still your responsibility? To cross the world and make that decision in order to exercise your moral judgement?

Now consider that this experiment is actually happening all over the world. War, slavery, suffering, evil dictatorships, etc. You yourself have the ability to ACT to influence these things, but you choose not to at every single instance where you are potentially able to help others. Are you still morally responsible for the things you choose not to care for? Is the entire First World responsible for the lives of those people they simply have the ability to save?

Every person that believes they need to ACT in the trolley scenario then must condemn the entirety of the world for their apathy, but are these apathists truly responsible? The fact is, by accepting the responsibility for other people's lives, you are inherently being a hypocrite by focusing on your own life at all when there are literally hundreds of others you can save through your potential actions. By accepting the moral code of helping others, you must sacrifice your entire life to helping them as otherwise you are an apathist that consciously refuses to help others at various intervals.

[Anonymous No.7128751]

>>7128745
Whoa Immanuel, settle down.

[Anonymous No.7128763]

>>7128745
>The fact is, by accepting the responsibility for other people's lives, you are inherently being a hypocrite by focusing on your own life at all when there are literally hundreds of others you can save through your potential actions. By accepting the moral code of helping others, you must sacrifice your entire life to helping them as otherwise you are an apathist that consciously refuses to help others at various intervals.

well, yeah.

[Anonymous No.7128779]

Everything is contextual. Situations change us, our world isn't absolute. All thoughts of actions are right sometimes and wrong other times.
Do what you believe and forge the heart to accept the consequences.

A fool can be more great than the wise man. Wise men get tricked by a fool all the time.

The answer for a universal law to protect and uphold absolute justice doesn't exist. Its all contextual, lawyers exist to alter the scale for that.

[Anonymous No.7128784]

>>7128779
everytime pomofags trot this pedestrian tripe out they think it's the first time we're hearing it. get bent

[Anonymous No.7128794]

>>7128667
How is inaction not wilfully avoiding said responsibility? You would only avoid it if you were blindfolded or otherwise ignorant of your surroundings.

[Anonymous No.7128805]

>>7128794
By deciding that another's life is not your responsibility in the first place. You're assuming that one's simple knowledge of it provides said responsibility, but it's one's intention according to their knowledge that provides it.

Your statement implies that you are responsible for not flying over to bumfuckistan and saving people who are warring over it this very minute.

[Anonymous No.7128806]

>>7128784
maybe its repeatedly cus its come around a lot. maybe there are people with more experience out there?
Did your parents repeatedly tell you to do something like brush your teeth which you were against till one day you get a colony of shit digging into your gums?

[Anonymous No.7128809]

>>7128794
Only because I'm observing the situation occur, doesn't mean I'm responsible, even if I avoided a possible interference. It's like saying you're responsible for letting poor people starve, because you don't give them money or food.

It's not my fault that I happened to cross that bridge and see this happen. But it's surely not my responsibility to act on it, why would it be? Who compels me so? Only I myself could.

[Anonymous No.7128817]

Why not kill them all?

[Anonymous No.7128818]

This dilemma was pretty much the go-to shitpost for a while year before last OP

[Anonymous No.7128819]

[Anonymous No.7128823]

[Anonymous No.7128824]

>not wanting to watch the sick loop debate loop

[Anonymous No.7128828]

[Anonymous No.7128829]

[Anonymous No.7128835]

>>7128818
I didn't know that, sorry. I only started coming here a month ago. I honestly just wanted to have a decent discussion..

[Anonymous No.7128846]

[Enigmatic No.7128847]

Inaction is action.
Situtational discretion is to be applied.
Lets increase the numbers then if you choose not to apply a numerical value in ethical dilemmas.

>1 vs 100?
>1 vs 1,000,000?

Still going to make the same choice?

Leave the hypotheticals for the chit chat

[Anonymous No.7128850]

I have a pretty fucked up stance. My answer to the first problem is to shift the track at random until the train comes up to it. This way you increase the chances of survival of the five while not actually committing to the killing the other guy. The second one would be a great justification for suicide.

[Anonymous No.7128851]

>>7128809
true no one should blame you. similar to how people get beaten up and a crowd will just watch. you can't blame the crowd.

but dem old ladies will be there, they are fucking everywhere. and they will jidge your ass. put you down under till you go get a blowjob to forget this shit.

[Anonymous No.7128856]

>>7128850
Oh that's neat. Kinda like what they do when they execute people... everyone just fires and some have a blank and others don't but you don't know who.. lol sounds like a chaos principle

[Anonymous No.7128862]

jump in the tracks and sing with the people. use juijustsu to become one with the crowd and be part of the problem and no longer the one with responsibility. fck my ass philosophy on /lit gets me stupid for thinking.

[Anonymous No.7128864]

>>7128835

It's all good, just letting you know why you're getting such a weird mix of "no fuck off" and reposts of weird mehmeh images in addition to anything serious.

Personally I like the trolley problem a lot. It cuts right to the heart of our convictions as members of liberal-capitalist societies, as >>7128745 makes very explicit. Our cultures tell us that we're obliged to save people's lives if we can, but deep down we all know that our culture's existence supervenes on the past and ongoing destructions of others. It's like the Le Guin story. The fact that we have to ask the question says something really grim about our values and who we are. I also think that just how the dilemma is framed is very illuminating as to our culture: we are asked to imagine ourselves as a man at the helm of a machine, exerting sole control over it, yet no matter what he does with it, the machine will run amok and annihilate human being(s). I think it's a philosophical attempt to point the finger at industrial civilization and say that its very existence is fucked from any previous ethical point of view.

[Anonymous No.7128871]

>>7128864
>liberal-capitalist

Speak for yourself. I'm a Democratic Socialist.

[Anonymous No.7129229]

>>7128871
I can't never not lose to this gif.

[Anonymous No.7129238]

>>7128667
Define "trolley"
Define "problem"
Define "fat"
Define "man"

[Anonymous No.7129341]

>>7128689
>>7128692
At least one of those people contribute positively to society.

Even if the one guy is a great dude, it's only one.

Also one family will mourn, instead of five.

Statistics aren't heartless.

[Anonymous No.7129367]

>>7128850
>could have actively made sure that the five survive
>lol no leave it to random chance
fucking coward

[Anonymous No.7129440]

>>7129367
What if those 5 guys are black and just gangbanged a white girl a day ago?

What if the train is divine punishment?

[Anonymous No.7129465]

Jump on the track and commit suicide via train.

[Anonymous No.7129473]

neetcha fag: who cares

god fag: yahweh forbids murder

secular humanist utilitarian marxist transgender antifa: multiple lives are more important than one life but this situation brings to light of the responsibility of action and my current inaction as immoral and paints my whole life as immoral so acting would condone a philosophy I'm unsure of which brings me back to a quote from my social justice class...

[Anonymous No.7129475]

>>7129238
Define, "faggot"

[Anonymous No.7129500]

>>7128846
holy shit

[Anonymous No.7129511]

>>7129440
Define "5 guys are black and just gangbanged a white girl"

[Anonymous No.7129523]

Do nothing.

Five dead people is better than one dead person.

[Anonymous No.7129564]

>>7128667
The question is based on your knowledge before hand, then the answer changes based on that knowledge.

If it was 6 randoms and I see the train heading to them, I am the only person around and the switch is relatively near me. I would choose the single random.

Who they are doesn't matter to me in that specific situation. We will sort it out afterwards.

[Anonymous No.7129570]

>>7128667
depends on the people
if i have no connection to them, the answer is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.7129717]

It's that thread again, huh.

[Anonymous No.7129769]

>>7128829
Is there an answer to this?

[Anonymous No.7129776]

>>7129769

Create maximum carnage.

[Anonymous No.7129780]

>>7129440
Their races are irrelevant and they were probably filming a porno.
you being behind the lever is punishment enough

[Anonymous No.7129903]

The means justify the end. The five dying is good because you didn't resort to murder to save them.

[Anonymous No.7129920]

>>7128667
why doesnt the guy put the switch half way? that way the train would derail and everyone wud be saved

[Anonymous No.7129935]

>>7128667
Assuming that everything given in the example actually represents the reality of the situation I have to wonder how exactly I came across this knowledge regarding the lever-track correspondence. I mean... I don't know shit about trains. Just put yourself in a situation with a lever and a set of tracks. Do you know if the lever switches the tracks to right or left when you pull it up or down? I mean really.

Also. Who the hell tied these fuckers to the tracks and where has this mysterious villain gotten off too? I mean, if he's serial, your hidden option 3 - go after the villain - might make the best option.

-someone must draw the perpetrator of the example's initial conditions-

How did this come about. Why did it come about. Since after one of five people die, someones got it coming.

[Anonymous No.7130003]

>>7129920
The train is full of the cutest kittens and puppy dogs in the world as selected by a panel of the world's foremost cuteness experts.

[Anonymous No.7130007]

>>7129935
Actually seems a valid point. If I switch it so one dude gets squished, I can argue that it's still not on me, it's on whatever evil oddball set the whole thing up.

[Anonymous No.7130014]

>>7129717
I don't get what ACDC has to do with this

[Anonymous No.7130018]

[Anonymous No.7130028]

>>7129920
Don't you imagine the train has a driver and in all probability passengers?

[Anonymous No.7130191]

>>7128667
cunt