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
My understanding of our disagreement so far is it boils down to: "ethical thought experiments are dumb and contrived, and likely harmful" vs. "ethical thought experiments are useful and interesting, and only dumb and contrived if overapplied."
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @Meaningness
I'm not sure it's even useful Here's a fun test: prove it
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Replying to @msutherl @Meaningness
when judges and legislators make law they think of hypotheticals and counterfactuals. in criminal law, one of these would be 'what is the most morally innocent person this law could capture'
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laws that aren't vetted by this kind of reasoning, ideally done by very conscientious and smart people, tend to harsh, overbroad and kafkaesque
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for some reason all the examples that spring to mind come from california
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for example, in the dissent in one supreme court of canada case, a justice rejected a definition of accessory to trafficking accepted by the majority
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why? because of a hypothetical innocent person she posited it would capture - a man whose girlfriend decided she was gonna buy drugs in a bad neighbourhood late at night, so he drives her
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now think of whatever bad and overbroad laws you want and ax urself - should maybe more thought experiments have been run on these?
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