Trolley problems appeal to people who like solving puzzles.
Ethics is not sudoku. That way of thinking reliably leads to extreme moral misjudgment.https://twitter.com/DRMacIver/status/1235990195297816577 …
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Replying to @Meaningness
Thought experiments in ethics are to parse out principles in extreme situations. SSC called them the "linear accelerators" of ethics, and I kind of agree. Obvs most real world applications are made under circumstances of substantial uncertainty with conflicting values in play.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @Meaningness
Right, but ethical decision making in practice isn't about making perfect decisions given full information, it's about making reliably good ones under bounded rationality and information, and if you include weird shit in your training you fit to the wrong distribution.
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Replying to @DRMacIver @Meaningness
Again, you’re not supposed to be using the thought experiment to simulate real decision making so that you can make similar judgments later. You’re doing it to isolate the inner workings of our moral intuitions.
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But our moral intuitions don't function inside the trolley-problem vantage point of a decontextualized lone actor making a one-time decision with perfectly knowable effects.
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Yes, and the trolley problem itself is a great illustration of this - why are we so much more squickey about pushing a fat man than pulling a lever? This is where it gets interesting.
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