| ▲ | deadbabe a day ago |
| Would people really pull the level to save 5 people? It seems to me like the default would be to just do nothing, stand by and record what happens with your phone. |
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| ▲ | zlandes86 a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Sadly that's a good question. The closest evidence I can find is: Surveys: Awad et all 2020 asked 70,000 people in 42 countries the 5 v 1 setup and 81% said they'd divert it Someone else did a VR version and 90% pulled the switch to divert And there was a study where people could give electric shocks to real mice :(
In that study, most people redirected the shock to a single mouse. |
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| ▲ | IncreasePosts a day ago | parent [-] | | I wonder what percent of that 81% would switch their answer if the question was phrased such that they were the one that would die if they pulled the lever. | | |
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| ▲ | quietbritishjim a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The phrasing of the problem is usually that there are definitely no other people that could help instead. The bystander effect, which you're describing, is at least partly because people reason that someone else is likely to be able to intervene instead. |
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| ▲ | hackeraccount 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We'd all think we were Captain Kirk in that situation I think. We'd somehow manage to kill all 6 people trying to come up with a solution that avoids anyone getting killed. Except for the actual Captain Kirk of course, who would do just what we wanted. |
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| ▲ | throw9393u300 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem. If you pull the lever, your direct action kills a person. Legally saving 5 people does not offset the murder of a single person. This is no special case like self defense. Congrats for saving 5 people, you still go to prison as a murderer! Train company has responsibility to save those 5 people, not some random stranger. The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people. |
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| ▲ | gpm a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem. Consider also the variation of the problem where you're a surgeon, you have 5 patients, and one healthy person whose organs/blood/... could save all 5 if only you murdered the one... (but none by simply maiming them, i.e. one needs a heart, one a stomach, one a liver, one so much of this particular kind of blood that you'd have to kill the donor, etc). > The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people. Standard philosophical interpretations would reject this possibility as impossible (the purpose of the question is to have a simplified environment to probe ethical beliefs - not to reflect reality). I'd also say even outside of that this is like saying you have to consider the possibility that by wearing a green sweater you might distract a driver and cause an accident - you might - but so might doing literally anything else - it's not a foreseeable outcome and has no ethical weight as a result. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Consider also the variation of the problem where you're a surgeon, you have 5 patients, and one healthy person whose organs/blood/... could save all 5 if only you murdered the one I have the book where that idea originated and the author is very proud of the additional ethical complexities he exposed with this example. But for some reason he never considered the possibility of kill (or allowing the natural death of) one of the 5 terminally ill patients and sharing out their otherwise undamaged organs to the other 4. | | |
| ▲ | gpm 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'd say for the sake of argument we're assuming that's not possible. Perhaps the blood types are incompatible in any direction but killing the healthy person [1]... the point isn't why these are the only options but assuming these are the only options what would be more ethical. Same way the point of the trolley problem isn't to say "derail the trolley" but to probe at which of two options is ethical in the nice simple world where those are the only two options - because if you can't say what's ethical in a simple world you certainly can't in a complicated one. [1] do you need blood type compatibility for organ transplants? I really don't know... But I'm certain there are some compatibility constraints to ground the example in the real world... | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The problem is stated is that all 5 terminally patients are fine but for a deadly tumor in a single organ that is going to kill them unless its replaced, and the oblivious jogger happens to be a compatible donor for all 5. Frankly, I think it's superfluous, since it doesn't substantively iterate on the trolley problem, just tries to make it (literally) more visceral. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This outcome is highly unlikely. The difficulty with trolley problems is that you rarely have such such perfect insight into real world problems such that you can make definitive statements about what # of people will be saved vs the impossibility of finding some other way to help the strangers on the tracks. Indeed the kind of people who make up new parts of the problem statement to avoid making a difficult moral decision are in my view most likely to freeze up and do nothing in a dangerous situation. | | | |
| ▲ | venzaspa 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Most people aren't railway engineers and don't spend their days being comfortable around train switches. That aspect alone would scare off a large amount of people because pulling a train switch is very outside their normal every day experience. I'd probably just watch it all unfold like an idiot. |
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| ▲ | adverbly a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Are we really at the point where we think that is a fair comparison? Treating it like a fair comparison implies that AI would be conscious. |
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| ▲ | a_wild_dandan a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Maybe! It's an untestable thought experiment. The real world adds complications like fearing murder charges. |
