The Trolley Problem

Discussion in 'Discussion' started by Makaze, Jul 7, 2016.

  1. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person tied up on the side track. You have two options:
    1. Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track.
    2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
    Which is the correct choice?
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2016
  2. Ghost King's Apprentice

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    There is no correct choice per se, but there is a more moral choice which would be to sacrifice the one person instead of the five. While neither are ideal, I would choose to save the five lives over the one if I had the chance.
     
  3. Solana Moogle Assistant

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    Am I assuming that those who are on the tracks are random civilians? If the five people on the main track were well-known for committing heinous crimes (coughHitlercough) then I wouldn't pull the lever and let the trolley hit them. BUT if I am assuming that they're normal, random people then I'd agree with Ghost and choose to divert the track to take one soul instead of five souls.
     
  4. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    What if they were all Hitlers, even the one on the side track?
     
  5. Ghost King's Apprentice

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    That would all depend on how you see it. Is it young Hitler who has the aspiration to be an artist or older Hitler who creates genocide. Even then, which Hitlers are which?

    If they are all young Hitler, I know this sounds bad, but I would kill the five and save the one. There is a better chance of getting one Hitler to pursue his dreams then motivating all five. As long as that dream is art school.

    Also, even if they are all older Hitler I would choose to kill all five because it's easier to deal with one. Be it imprisonment or execution.
     
  6. Blaine Destiny Islands Resident

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    I'm going to need a background check on those people before I decide. But if we're just basing it off in the heat of the moment then I would pull the level to kill 1 to save the others.
     
  7. Arch Mana Knight

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    I would start furiously switching the lever so that fate will decide who the train runs over. Then wait for another train to come and pull the lever again to leave no witnesses.

    But seriously, saving five is the logical choice.
    The more interesting question is the variation on this problem.

    If a train was coming along to run over five people stuck to the tracks and you were standing by someone so fat that pushing them onto the tracks would stop the train and save the five, would you kill that person? Now, instead of being somewhat indirectly involved in the death of one person, saving the lives of five requires an act of something that is unquestionably murder.
     
  8. Ghost King's Apprentice

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    I would not kill this person because that would be murder and I would rather be indirectly connected to five deaths than directly connected to one, but if we go further into this variation and say that the fat man was the one who put these people in this situation would you feel that you could sacrifice his life for theirs now?

    This is all assuming that we all have a good moral compass. Someone could easily see this situation and decide it's not their problem if any of these people die and just walk away.
     
  9. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    It will definitely kill someone, but it won't necessarily stop the trolley. You can't make a value judgment unless you reduce it to pure probability. Just saying "If you know it will stop the trolley" doesn't make them confident in it as hypothetical. I don't believe I could ever know in that case. It's got too many variables because it's not a on-off switch. There is skill involved in blocking the track. The factor of the person struggling and trying to get away. In the case of the lever, you know that you will save lives.
     
  10. GhettoXemnas literally dead inside

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    Do nothing. I didn't place the people on that track. Their deaths are tragic but if I save them I can be convicted of knowingly making the choice to kill the other man.
     
  11. Sara Tea Drinker

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    Interestingly enough, I heard about this problem recently and actually about the Hitler problem.

    I'll answer the second problem first: The Hitler issue.

    I recently saw it in a web series I watch often where it asked if you kill Hitler if you could travel back in time. Even IF he was in his more innocent years when he dreamed of being an artist. My mom put it best, and it sticks to my mind even today:

    "Even if he's innocent now, shouldn't you stop him before he does all the evil things later on in life?"

    I have a tendency to agree with her statement. IF you don't know that he's going to, it brings a whole new set of problems, but if you do and you get a chance to end it before then. Yes, I would.

    The other big issue is the whole trolley itself: Do you want to save five people, or one? The biggest part from what I hear is if you know the one person. If it's your best friend, which is a critical point in one game. It's spoilers so I won't mention what game. It was a even split between the two when you played the game, but when you remove the factor of knowing the person, i.e.: if you haven't played the game, you don't have the same moral qualms or knowledge of the person, it's WAY more biased towards saving the town.

    So I would say it depends on what you know about the person, or people, and what you would decide. If nothing: I would choose five to one to be saved.
     
  12. Arch Mana Knight

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    The entire purpose of silly hypothetical questions like this are simply to ponder the moral/ethical issues with choice and indecision. I could conjure up a scenario that's better thought out than "push the fat guy to save five lives" but that doesn't matter. Of course it's silly to think that a human body could stop the momentum of a 1000 ton train(or that it would be feasible to push someone with enough weight to do so).

    The question is simply whether or not you would actively murder someone with your own hands(without a lever as a "middleman") knowing without a doubt it would save five lives. The realism of the situation has no relevance here.

    That being said, logically the lesser of two evils here would be to kill one to save the five but if I were ever placed in that kind of situation I don't know what I would actually do. Thankfully, cartoonish villains who set up these kinds of trials don't really exist(hopefully).
     
  13. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    The point of a thought experiment is to help you imagine a scenario where such a decision would make sense, so a difficult to imagine scenario is a bad experiment. That's all I'm saying. Personally, I don't see a mountain of difference between the scenarios except in the extra variables. You are still choosing to sacrifice one life to save five, and you have no alternatives. The only obstacle is emotional.
     
  14. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    I believe in utilitarian ethics, so in the absence of any other information, I would switch the track and kill one to save five. But if I knew the one person on the other track and cared about them personally, I would kill the five to save them. If the five on the track were elderly and the one on the side track were a child, I would kill the five. There can be a lot of nuance to the situation just by adding some information.
     
  15. Lauriam I hope I didn't keep you waiting...

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    If I were personally in this situation, I would choose to save the five. Saying nothing about whatever anyone else might feel or believe, my personal morality compass would attribute the choice of letting the five die to be of equal direct contribution as to that of pulling the lever and dooming the one. My simply being given the opportunity to change makes it, in my head, my problem and my responsibility. This is just how I'm wired; observing an injustice or an 'evil,' for lack of a better word, and doing nothing to stop it, is just as reprehensible to my character as directly contributing to another evil. It's how I've always been, it's why I was such a huge tattle-tale as a child. If I saw my sisters breaking the rules, letting it happen was just as bad to me as joining in. (lol, in fact, I tattled so much that my mom actually had to make it a rule that I was only allowed to inform her of rule-breaking if it involved physical danger to the rulebreaker, so that my conscience would not allow me to tattle, as then I would be breaking a rule. Eventually, I had to force myself to learn to not care about whether or not other people follow the rules, simply to spare myself the inner conflict whenever I saw a rule being broken but could do nothing or risk breaking my own rule. XD) Therefore, since that's how my brain is wired, I would feel just as bad for not stopping the deaths of the five as I would for causing the other one. In addition to protecting my own feelings, it just makes more sense that one should die as opposed to five, regardless of age or influence or anything like that, which again, might be different for others but in my own head, makes no major difference in the long run.

    However, then I would at least attempt to muster up the courage to get down onto the tracks and free the one from their bonds. I cannot say that I would, because until I'm actually faced with a life-or-death situation, I have no idea how I would react. But I would at the very least try to try to save the one person, even if it risked my own life as well. At least I hope I would. It's easier to say "I'D JUMP IN FRONT OF A TRAIN TO SAVE A LIFE" when you're sitting on a couch in front of a computer screen. XD But yeah, I would try, because again; My mind views my inaction as just as reprehensible as taking a reprehensible action.

    But, that's just me. XD
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2016
  16. 61 No. B

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    pull the lever. id take responsibility on my conscience for one persons death to save five others. i wouldnt kill the person with my own hands, but id gladly due something less gruesome and arguably indirect. now if that one person was someone i knew and the five others were strangers, no chance would i do it.

    this is assuming that what would probably happen, which is id feeze up and turn around and pretend nothing happened and be crushed with overwhelming guilt for the rest of my life, wouldnt happen.
     
  17. Shadox D. Twilight Town Denizen

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    I'd leave the lever alone. In my opinion, there are already too many people in the world. Of course, it would get complicated if they were people that I knew and care about. But assuming that I do not know or care about them, I would not interfere, and let the five people die.
     
  18. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    I'd try to jam the lever so the track gets stuck in between the two positions, bringing the trolley to a halt and (hopefully) sparing all six. Even if I failed and it hit the five, at least I tried. In my mind it's better to try to save six and fail to save five, than to willfully let even one die.

    This is, of course, assuming that the six people are too far for me to just yell GET THE F#%K OFF THE TRACK YA IDGITS THERE'S A TROLLEY COMIN'.
     
  19. Splodge Twilight Town Denizen

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    I see Godwin's Law is in full effect.

    Ah, this problem again. When its the case of 5 versus 1, I like to believe that I would pull the lever to kill the 1 person to save 5. This is assuming of course that all 6 people are on completely equal terms, in age, criminality etc. I agree completely with Makaze on utilitarian ethics, however, I think that in that real life scenario, I don't think that I would be able to will myself into causing the death of 1, even when it leads to an undoubtedly better outcome.

    With the fat man problem variation, I find it hard to believe that anyone in that real life scenarios would directly cause the death of another human. At least with the lever situation, you could rationalise that internally and think "well I didn't kill him with my two hands, so it's fine", but with actually shoving a person onto the tracks, I at least, would find it impossible to make that raionalisation.

    And about Hitler, its an interesting thought experiment, sure, but killing hitler would seriously **** up history.
     
  20. axel. Merlin's Housekeeper

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    I think I would pull the lever to save the five of them because even though you're consciously doing it, and it's your fault for someone getting killed, it would also be your fault if the other five got killed because you didn't pull the lever even though you had the chance.