Trolley problems are exceedingly uncommon in the wild. If someone is going out of their way to use them to justify something, and everyone on the track you pull the lever to hit happens to be a minority, that person is just being a bigot & using "pragmatism" or whatever as cover
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
What I've always found interesting about the trolley problem IS the arbitrariness. I initially saw it framed two ways: 1) throw a switch to move the trolley, kill 1 save 5. 2) push someone in front of the trolley to stop it. Kill 1, save 5. In 1, people will switch. in 2, not...
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Replying to @Czhorat @BootlegGirl
...it's the same result. One person dies to save five. The instinctive answer is different based on how "personal" it feels. It really seems to me to be a critique of a simplistic kind of pure utilitarianism. Using it for more misses the point.
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Replying to @Czhorat @BootlegGirl
The original idea of the trolley problem was that in its "classic" form everyone says yes but as you reformulate it to feel more and more extreme people start to balk, even though from a naive utilitarian standpoint it's the same thing
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Most people do, in fact, say that murdering one healthy person to harvest their organs to save five people is bad, even though the math is exactly the same
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Exactly. It's a critique/discussion of pure naive utilitarianism, not a real debate on who to kill to save who?
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Imo the other thing is that most cases of trolley problem aren't actually calculated decisions. In real life they're usually snap judgments (often by the one person who's gonna be sacrificed) or calculated military decisions where it's a choice of evils rather than ideals
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Czhorat and
Yeah - I do think that overall, the abstract utilitarian challenge makes it interesting, but it's not the answer but why they're different that matters the most.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @loudpenitent and
Interestingly the Wikipedia article on "Trolley Problem" does point out a controversial real life case that closely fits the original parable, even if no one died in the end
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
In 2003 there was a runaway freight train in LA that was heading toward a station where passenger trains stopped To reduce the risk of loss of life, since they couldn't stop the train they diverted it into a sparsely populated low income neighborhood (the town of Commerce)
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They knew that the area was inhabited and that the train would likely derail and go into people's houses but decided this was a better option than a collision on the tracks Two people's houses were destroyed and thirteen people went to the hospital
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
One of the victims was a pregnant woman who very narrowly avoided being crushed by a collapsing ceiling This was already pretty bad PR for the company but that would've been worse
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
Interestingly the debate over the company's decisions here does reflect various classic "trolley problem" arguments Like the argument over whether people in a passenger train have "assumed the risks" of a train accident but people in nearby houses have not
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