Many years ago we had a thread like this on the Rotten Tomato's Forum and it was my favorite thread. @lagtight suggested I try and see if it catches on in this subforum so here it is.

And if it catches on I will, or i invite others to pose other such questions in the same format in a new thread with a similar heading and poll.

I'll start with the very common and template Trolley Dilemma with my slight twist.


Ethical Dilemma Question 1:

- A natural disaster means a train will derail and all 50 passengers will die
- you have the option to throw a switch to divert the train but know that doing so will see the train hit a car, killing a family of 4 (parents with 2 infant children and the family dog), but allowing all 50 on the train to survive.

You realize in Option 1 you have no culpability in a choice of inaction. This course of events began as a natural cycle without your involvement and will play out that way if you don't act. No one will ever know you had a chance to change the course of this.

You are fine having your intervention be the determining factor here. You accept everyone will know you knew the choice you were making and made it anyway. You know you may be confronted by family members of the deceased in the car and accept they may or may not forgive your actions and choice.

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In a tangential question to the above, regardless of the way you answer, is there a number of deaths that would change your view to the other answer?

Meaning if instead of 50 on the train, if it was 200, or 2000, or 2MM who would die, would your answer change? If the changed number on the train is the determinant for you, please tell us what you think your minimal threshold for that number would be? Is it 5 on the train versus the 4 in the car? Or the 2MM?

My answer.

I find this an enormously difficult question to answer but feel i would throw the switch.

I ask myself if I, despite my massive grief would be able to understand the decision made by that person if it was my family members lost and I think I would. I might not like it or the person but I think I would understand.

Seeing more than 10:1 loss ratio for inaction is just not something I think I could turn away from. As that number goes up and up, such as 2MM versus the 4+dog, I think my decision would much easier, and if that is the case it speaks to how I would view this as a utilitarian decision. If you agree with me that at 2MM this decision is clear than you are on my side of this ledger even if you would haggle me on price (ultimate number where you justify it).

It is much harder for me set a lower limit however as I would not make the choice to throw the switch if there were 6 on the train or even 10.

To quote Rush “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. If I throw the switch I’m responsible for killing four humans. If I don’t I’m responsible for killing 50. Either way, I’m responsible for killing some number of people. I personally minimize the loss of life.

What others think of my decision is of no relevance to me. I understand that the grieving relatives of the family in the car would hate me, but I just couldn’t allow even more people to die. It’s a matter of my own ability to justify my decision and live with it.

What if there are 4 people on the trolley? Flip a coin I guess unless I know something about the passengers. (Oops forgot the dog in the car; I guess that’s the tiebreaker— I’d rather kill four people than four people plus a dog).

I think we may see some strong views on that point.

On the old RT thread on a very similar discussion the sizeable Libertarian posters took the position that no one has any obligation nor responsibility to act who was not part of that scenario. You could if you want sure. They also argued even if you knew no harm would come to anyone if you diverted the train (all lives saved) you should have no obligation or responsibility to act. Again you could to be nice but don't have to.

They were mainly talking in regards to the law (good Samaritan type laws) but some took the more harsh tact that no one has to ever help anyone if they simply don't want to and there should be no need to justify that statement any more than that.

How about a mixed solution? Get a deck with 54 cards* and mark 4 for the people in the car. Shuffle and cut to decide. That way the people in the car have a chance and you can shift some of your responsibility to Luck.

* 55 cards if you want to include the dog


PairTheBoard

Or if you want to get old school about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_straws

what kinda dog is it?

Maybe it's arguable that flipping a coin is the fairest solution, because that's the only way that everyone has an equal chance of survival.

I don't throw the switch. I'd feel bad about it and would likely spend the rest of my life wondering if I should've but if I throw the switch I've directly intervened and it's on me.

There's another consideration: One of those children may be the next Einstein or it might be that someone on the train will discover a cure for a debilitating disease. I have no way of knowing. Knowing either might change my non-action. That's not really satisfactory but I've got enough regret in my head as it is, I don't need more.

I kill the guy who keeps making these killer trolleys, thereby saving countless hypothetical lives.

This kid obviously came up with the correct solution:

In which a father learns that his son is a psychopath.

I enjoy dilemmas like these. Thanks for posting, Cuepee!


Here is my opinion on the matter:

People who choose to ride a train presumably understand that a fatal crash is possible.

The driver of the car and his adult passengers likewise understand that driving a car entails the possibility of a fatal crash.

Given that the "natural disaster" is going to cause the fatal derailment of the train (but will not affect the automobile), then the train passengers should be the ones to suffer the fatalities.

Not sure there is a name for the principle I'm employing here.

I don't throw the switch... Because of the dog, obviously.

In seriousness, the decision to throw the metaphorical switch leads to all kinds of disturbing outcomes. It's the same old "ends justify the means," thinking that has contributed to some of the world's worst atrocities.

In recent affairs, the US government has argued that because of the existence of WMDs it is justifiable to preemptively attack and kill terrorists/potential terrorists. It does seem somewhat logical. What are the lives of a few terrorists worth compared to millions who could potentially be killed by a dirty bomb, chemical/biological agents, etc.?

The problem is where do you draw the line? Also, who's to say that by killing a potential terrorist, you don't cause a family member to seek revenge, thereby bringing about the very outcome you were trying to prevent?

Going back to the trolley problem, another issue I have with flipping the switch is the fallibility of human perception. How can I be sure that the trolley will derail and that all 50 passengers will die? Maybe the crash won't be as bad as I had anticipated, and the passengers will all miraculously survive.

Admittedly I don't know what I would do in the moment if I was faced with the trolley problem IRL. However in theory I'm against throwing the switch out of the principle that it's not right to kill a family of four no matter what benefit I anticipate.

Crime and Punishment is a good read that happens to do a much better job than I have of highlighting the problems with utilitarianism.

Natural selection? LoL.

I'm not sure what term you were searching for, but I agree with your point. By choosing an activity you are accepting the inherent risk. It's therefore not right for someone to intervene to shift the natural negative outcome of your choices to another entity.

A weird combination of fatalism and the appeal to nature fallacy.

In my opinion, fatalism wouldn't be an apt description of my dealing with the dilemma, given that I acknowledge that the switch operator can make a free will choice of diverting the train. In fatalism, there are no free will choices.

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera

(Excerpt from Doris Day, one of the great 20th century American Philosophers)

The bolded seems a good way of expressing the principle I had in mind.

If the switch operator can do all of that in about five seconds, then he must have supernatural powers and can just choose to intervene in the situation by preventing the crash in the first place if he wants.

The question, as stated, gives people excuses to muddy the waters. It would be better to state that you know nothing of the people or what they were doing other than that your throwing the switch means the number of people who die goes way down, but that those people whose death you caused would have lived if you hadn't thrown the switch.

Is there a non religious reason not to throw it? If you would throw it in these circumstances, then I ask if you would still throw it if the smaller number was 100% to die if you did throw the switch but you somehow know that there is a 20% chance the much larger number would escape if you didn't.

It's a lot easier to avoid having to analyze things on a case by case basis when you can fall back on simple sayings. In real life the ends do sometimes justify the means and sometimes don't. And to not draw a line somewhere just because you don't know exactly where, is actually a fallacy that I believe has a name. Someone can look it up.

That is why I said it was a weird combination.

If it weren't, and there was an actual principal in play, I would have told you the name of it.

You would use the same principal to make decisions on whether to use an umbrella, right? It would be sunny out if you were meant to be dry.

Do you believe that the morality of an action is purely a function of the utility of the action, kind of like an EV equation for calculating the positive and negative effects of the action? I can respect that opinion.

I am of the belief that killing a human being is inherently wrong, and that no amount of positive effects coming from that killing is enough to justify the act. I'm considering that by pulling the trolley switch we are effectively killing the family in the car. It's definitely a complex issue, and I can see how others would see it differently though.

With the rise of self-driving cars, the trolley problem is a timely topic for conversation. This sort of thing will need to be worked out on a practical level as driving decisions are shifted to computers.

I know I would be much more comfortable with allowing a computer to drive my car if it is programmed to simply try to avoid collisions and attempt to keep me alive. I would not be OK with a computer running probability simulations that include the option of killng me, "for the greater good," or to avoid a larger number of casualties in an accident.

It isn't a complex issue. Either you feel that commission of an act is sufficiently more important morally (in this case, measured in number of lives) than omission of an act, or it isn't sufficiently different.

Many people feel that there is a difference, but they struggle to justify that difference. That is the ONLY interesting thing about trolley problems; it points out that human moral feelings are kind of weird.

People tend to think that sins of commission are way worse than sins of omission. But in many cases that is easy to disprove. They also incorrectly think that committing very good acts do not more than make up for committing the same number of slightly bad acts (in comparison to those who do neither.)