Nope, you’re not fat enough. Now get busy killing fictional people!
4 Likes
This. It’s not a test, in the sense of what it tells us about an individual’s personality, it’s a tool to probe human moral heuristics. Despite how the media (including pop science magazines) have presented it, Voight-Kampff it ain’t. And as such, moving on from the trolley thought-experiment to other tools is the anticipated and natural next step.
Saying that, I’d go for some VR-type experiments along the same lines: some scenarios that teach you the physics of the VR world, then some interactions with VR people, and then the dilemma. Just to get the intellectual mind out of the picture and get those empathic mirror cells working.
1 Like
Wait, is this actually some sort of Turing test?
2 Likes
It is a thought experiment. You are told that the fat man would stop the
trolley. Real-world intuition doesn’t play into it. You are told that
the fat man would stop the trolley. These are the variables. You are told that the fat man would stop the trolley. No more, no less.
But humans don’t reach difficult decisions through strict application of ethical axioms and logical deduction. Yes, we’re told that pushing the fat man will save the lives, but our experience suggests that the fat man might try to resist our push, might fall in a somewhat unpredictable direction, might be insufficient to stop the trolley. The people might dive away at the last second. The police are getting involved after this action. We might not even conciously be aware of these objections, but I do think these factors are coloring our subconscious “ick, don’t do that” reaction, which changes answers.
“hard cases make bad law”
5 Likes
I don’t get this thought experiment at all. Just stop the trolley yourself and stop making dramatic mental games about who it should hit.
But maybe it’s the British side of me that makes me think that.
4 Likes
I have never liked the switch problem because it never strikes me as believable. I have heard a much better version of this problem…
There is a legend of a giant beast that lives in the river. No-one has seen it since your grandfather’s time. So, you and your friends often fish on this river. Four of you row, and do most of the actual work. There is a fifth guy who is large and clumsy, and is not much use, but you bring him along anyhow because he is one of you.
Suddenly, something that can only be the Beast of the River appears, and makes straight for your boat. You all row as hard as you can, but you are clearly not going to make it to the edge of the river and safety…
(A)
The fat guy falls in. It looks like the Beast will have him, but the boat is lighter and might escape. Do you turn around and try to rescue him? Or do you paddle for shore?
(B)
The fat guy does not fall in. But you could push him in. Do you do that?
©
You are the fat guy. Do you jump out of the boat so the others might live?
1 Like
Are you allowed to pull a Kobayashi Maru and pull a different but plausible choice out of your ass?
8 Likes
This Beast will enjoy eating him, fat or lean - so why make him fat? Does this make him less valuable?
That reminds me, does everybody know the bear-hunting story? Ed and Roger take a shot at mama grizzly, but they only wing her and make her furious. She’s 400 pounds of killing machine, and as they run, Roger starts throwing away his gun, his pack, even his clothes.
“Why are you doing that?” shouts Ed, “that’s not going to make you faster than a grizzly!”
“I don’t have to outrun her,” says Roger, "I only have to outrun you."
2 Likes
Roger that.
recognizing that this might be a turing test means that you are probably NOT an android , and can stop avoiding harrison ford ~
3 Likes
squinting eyes
Because the only other way it works is if you make him weak or handicapped? He has to be the “lesser” of all the people involved.
Yes THIS. The fact that it is specifically a ‘fat guy’ does affect the thought experiment’s results. ‘Fat guys’- and gals- are routinely dehumanized in culture, often for comical purposes, so it does lessen the impact of making the decision. I wonder how much the results would be affected if the person who is meant to magically (because it is magic anyways) stop the trolley were a pretty young woman, somebody’s baby in a carriage, etc, or inversly if the bus was full of ex-convicts.
I don’t understand why this test never seems to be simply stated as ‘bus full of people’ v.s. ‘person X’ who can magically stop the train/trolley. Adding qualifiers only muddles the point.
3 Likes
[quote=“Richard_Kirk, post:26, topic:54543”]
(A)The fat guy falls in. It looks like the Beast will have him, but the boat is lighter and might escape. Do you turn around and try to rescue him? Or do you paddle for shore?[/quote]
He probably would have a lot of trouble getting back into the boat even if we did get to him first, and we probably wouldn’t make it together anyway - probably best to discuss the pros and cons here… oh, it got him. I feel bad now.
He should probably move to the back to balance the weight and allow the others to paddle evenly. Oh, he fell in. Well, he was large and clumsy…
or:
The boat is big enough for five adults with their oars and fishing tackle. Is one extra person going to make that much difference? He may be clumsy, but presumably he’s able to do some rowing, right? Pushing him in will make hardly any difference to your effectiveness other than using him as bait, while risking capsising the whole boat (which would serve everyone right, to be honest).
or:
If there may be time to go back and pull a large, clumsy guy out of the water, then help him recover while the others row, there’s probably enough time for the five of you to row back to the shore without the beast catching up.
I think in this situation, I would probably be motivated to make myself useful - by rowing as fast as I can and throwing the food, bait and fish we’ve caught overboard, for instance. Nobody has seen the Beast for generations, so obviously humans aren’t its main source of food. Meanwhile I’d keep an eye on my treacherous ‘friends’.
How about this one?
You’re in a boat in a lake that’s turned to sulphuric acid due to the volcano behind you. You’ve been making good progress, but the acid is strong enough to kill all the fish and even dissolve the metal in your boat in a very short time. The boat is definitely going to sink within the next minute, but you are nearly at the dock. I mean, it’s right. there. Like, 3-6 feet away. Do you:
(A)
Jump onto the dock and pull the boat behind you
(B)
Wait 3 seconds until the boat arrives at the dock
(C)
Jump into the water, pull the boat one metre and then walk straight past the dock towards the shore.
2 Likes
Probably - those who answered right were woken up in a vat a pink slime in a post-apocalyptic wasteland battery stack.
Hell, my solution was to throw the person who was encouraging me to kill tubby onto the tracks.
2 Likes
"Instead, we need to find new ways to suss out a person’s ability to ‘transcend our narrow focus on ourselves and those near and dear to us, and to extend our circle of concern to everyone, however geographically, temporally or even biologically distant.’ ” Okay. There is just no way ever that every individual human is going to be concerned with every other human that isn’t within their immediate circle. It’s a nice hope, but human nature being what it is, if it happens it probably won’t any time soon. And if you’re an empath, too much concern for those who aren’t in your immediate circle can cause internal struggles. To quote Linus Van Pelt: “I love mankind - it’s PEOPLE I can’t stand!”
Yep. Pretty much the reply across all cultures is that the likely real outcome is…
(A)
Row for the shore while arguing that we perhaps ought to really go back for him. Argue afterwards that the right thing was probably done, but not feel too happy about it.
(B)
Row for the shore while thinking (but maybe not saying out loud) that we could dump one guy to save four. If any survive, argue afterwards that the right thing was probably done, but if additional people die, not feel too clever about it.
©
Agonize about whether you ought to make the supreme sacrifice, but dither and leave it too late. If you survive, and others don’t, feel a bit guilty but rationalize that you might have done the right thing if there had been time to think.
It seems most people in most cultures appreciate that (A) and (B) are morally different, though only actual difference was that the person fell and landed out of the boat in (A) and inside the boat in (B), In all three cases, people say they would make for the shore, and avoid the decision to do something and take responsibility, be it good (go back), or bad (chuck someone out), or noble (jump out yourself).
2 Likes
What if the fat man held the cure for cancer that would save millions?
What if one of the children turned out to be a serial killer and killed 100 other people?
What if the deaths of those children caused the trolley company to fix their faulty brakes, thus saving hundreds of future trolley riders from death?
What if you go to jail for killing the fat man, thus rendering you unable to save others in the future?
Killing the fat man is by no means the “rational” choice. The only rational choice is to realize that you don’t know the true outcome and overall cost-benefit analysis of this situation at all.
3 Likes
Is the whole experiment not missing the point of the thought experiment entirely?
The interesting thing about the trolley problem - the whole point of the problem in my mind, is that it sets up a deliberately far-fetched situation to test an edge-case of simple utilitarianism.
It’s all about breaking down the feel-good summary of utilitarian thought- “The greatest good of the greatest number” and all that- and showing you what mechanically maximising one variable really means. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable with the “obvious” solution, and prompt you to consider why that is:
- Do you conclude that there are moral absolutes beyond utilitarianism after all
- Do acts and omissions count differently to you?
- Is your real problem with using another human as an object, as the existentialists would say
Whatever way you resolve the contradiction, it’s supposed to tell you more about what moral philosophy you really support, and whether you can back it up.
5 Likes
So the safest choice is to destroy the planet. Got it.
2 Likes
