I just played this as a board game with my friends. They decided that pineapple on pizza is worse than Donald Trump. My hope in humanity is shattered.
That is crazy. I can’t think of any part of Donald Trump that I would want on my pizza.
Aren’t we always chanting “eat the rich”? I’d be fine with the food poisoning, hell even the brain eating prions, if it means he won’t be president.
Touché
Just put explosives collars on a bunch of murderers and rapists. Need superpowers just press a button and kill one murderer off.
yes, if you change the problem, you change the way we respond. that’s why there’s so many trolley problems spin offs in the first place
but the end result is the same.
you’re always left with five.
But…it’s not a math dilemma, it’s a moral one. Changing it to hot philanthropic strippers changes the morality.
the morality doesn’t exist in the first place because we don’t live in a society that would allow someone to tie up six people on two tracks.
we do live in a world with real problems. Complex problems. Problems that lose solvable value when they are reduced to a philosophical joke.
so please tell me more about how we can solve the worlds problems by flipping switches on train tracks.
The artist just immortalized in a strip that does not understand the trolley problem.
Entire thing is analysis paralysis. There always some information that will change desired outcome.
It understands it just fine. Agency is not a factor in the decision. The choice between action and inaction doesn’t matter. People think it matters because people are driven by shortsighted emotions.
I think the thing that people often don’t seem to understand about the trolley problem is that it doesn’t have a “single version”, it’s a framework for exploring human decision making. And the correct answer, it’s all a matter of perspective. For example, if all of drag’s friends were on one side of the track, and on the other side of the track, were a number of people who drag does not know, equal to the number of drag’s friends plus one, would drag kill their friends, or the innocent people?
Yeah exactly, the trolley problem is just like a benchmark of moral and ethics, the outcome is irrelevant. The thought process is what is relevant.
Drag’s friends. Drag has at least ten friends probably, and drag’s friends are at least 10% better than the average rando. They’re mostly communists and queers. The world is better off with them in it than with some random people who are probably capitalists.
Thank you so much for being honest about making that choice - almost everyone would choose their friends, but lots of people wouldn’t admit to that. Being honest myself, I’d make the same call - and if it came down to me picking between my friends and drag’s friends, I’d choose my friends. The whole “calculus” we run (comparing how good our friends are to average people) is a way we justify making our decisions, a way to deal with the cognitive dissonance of our values (save as many lives as possible) being in conflict with what we actually do (saving our friends rather than as many lives as possible). In reality you would have no way of knowing who those other 11 people would be - for example, if I said that one of them is a researcher on the brink of curing cancer, how would that change your decision? These are really tough questions to deal with, and that’s the point of the trolley problem - that people make different choices because they have different perspectives, and different values. There’s no objectively right and objectively wrong answer to any of the scenarios. Just different interpretations and ways to think about it.
Drag chooses to kill those people because drag knows nothing about them. Drag just assume they’re randos. And on average, people suck. Drag’s friends are great people.
If drag knew more about the people, the equation would change. Drag finds it difficult to reason seriously about a scientist discovering a cure for cancer, since there’s no such thing. There are hundreds of cancers. There’s no one solution for all of them and there never will be. We’ll need hundreds of cures for cancer, many of which we already use today.
If we went with a more realistic scenario, like “one of those people will be the leader of the USA’s communist revolution”, drag would be much more willing to kill drag’s friends. Drag might also commit suicide about it, though, so maybe the numbers aspect is equal anyway. Would drag give drag’s life and all drag’s friends’ lives away for a communist America? Probably, but drag would sure like some assurance it’s going to be proper anarchist communism, and drag wants to know if another leader could have taken that place. Does drag even believe in the “great man” approach to history, or is there no such thing as such a leader? Is there nobody that important?
That’s perfect, drag, I don’t think anyone could have put it better. The trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment, yet so many people approach it like it’s some sort of engineering problem that has right and wrong answers, I think it’s probably a consequence of our sort of “tech bro” culture that everything needs to fit into this rational, quantitative framework - we have this drive to put numbers on things that just can’t be rationalised in that way.
People are funny, complicated things, and I love them all!
Agency might matter depending on societal context. 5 hot guys might be worse than 1 hot guy in a world with limited resources, for example.
Everyone knows that 5 of something is usually better than 1. The dilemma comes from finding a situation where that might not be true, and therein exploring some quirks of our own humanity.
It goes too far when people interpret these quirks as fundamental human traits, but there is genuine merit in testing oneself with fun hypotheticals
testing oneself with fun hypotheticals
fun
you’ve got a peculiar taste for fun, I must admit
edit
to be fair, I don’t disagree, and discussing things like that or pondering them can be fun, but I still wouldn’t expect such a choice of words 😅
Trolley problems can be directly mapped to those “would you rather” drinking games. e.g. Would you have sex with your dad to save your mum’s life?
The question is meaningless in a normal context, the answer is meaningless in a normal context, but it’s fun to explore your limits in strange circumstances, no?
That’s true, there’s even a party game that consists solely of controversial topics to talk about, not even this kind of weird ones
That’s not a matter of agency, that’s still a matter of the goodness of the action. You constructed a version where more of the magic hot guys is bad, and made the valence negative again. So now one is better, and agency still isn’t a factor.
What’s actually interesting is the doctor version. Kill one healthy person and harvest their organs to save five people from death? That, at first glance, puts agency back in the equation. But drag still thinks the key isn’t agency. It’s power. In the trolley version, you have no power over who’s on the other track. You didn’t choose that person in particular to die, they just happened to be in the way. In the doctor version, either you or the boss chose a healthy person to die. You got to pick. You cannot take responsibility for picking. And you cannot support a system in which another person picks either. But when random chance picks who has to die, that’s fine. There’s no abuse of power in that one. Killing who you need to kill in order to save others isn’t abusive power. Picking who dies, when you could have picked someone else, that’s abuse.
So philosophical debate on this topic is meaningless, because utilitarism is obviously correct?
Please take off your clothes and lay down here, I have five patients in desperate need of organ transplants.
Please see the other comment drag wrote in this thread in reply to the earlier comment replying to drag, which drag wrote before seeing yours.
I, as the doctor, didn’t pick you. Your organs happen to be compatible with all five recipients. It’s still random chance, you’re just unlucky because your organs work best.
So, we gonna chop you up, or not?
What a crock of shit. Living with the knowledge that you killed someone isn’t shortsighted, it’s tragic. You pulling the trigger to switch the trolley to kill only the 1 person can and will have consequences on your own mental health.
And the comic isn’t even about the choice between action and inaction, it’s about “Oh wow, 5>1, this dilemma is easy lol” - nah, even if you make it purely about the numbers - unless you’re a fucking psychopath, you’re not gonna kill your newborn to save 5 strangers.
Living with knowing you did nothing to save 4 people may affect you as badly. To be fair, the person doing the choice is fucked up both ways, if ey is not a sociopath.
You pulling the trigger to switch the trolley to kill only the 1 person can and will have consequences on your own mental health.
That’s called selfishness, and it’s not generally considered a factor in ethics. At most, that changes the equation to 2 vs 5. Still easy.
unless you’re a fucking psychopath, you’re not gonna kill your newborn to save 5 strangers.
Then psychopaths are right and neurotypical people are wrong. The world would be better off if it had more psychopaths, as you describe them.
But you’re wrong about psychopaths. See, what you’re describing is limited empathy. You have more empathy for your baby than for five strangers, because of your limited point of view and inability to abstract the situation and see the bigger picture. A psychopath, according to pop psychology (psychopathy doesn’t actually exist in serious psychology, but let’s pretend it does) has no empathy. A psychopath doesn’t care who dies. They probably save the baby because it’s more socially acceptable and will make them look good. That’s selfishness again.
If you want to know who saves the strangers, well that’s someone who has empathy for both the baby and the strangers, and the wisdom to empathise equally with both. That kind of wisdom is extremely rare because natural selection doesn’t favour it. It doesn’t offer any advantage over the rest of the species to be that selfless. So you’d be most likely to find it in an extremely rare combination of autistic traits, or in a very enlightened Buddhist monk.
Don’t bother trying to explain philosophy directly to people online. We’re so convinced of our own intelligence that we refuse to consider that our knee-jerk reaction to anything might be worth exploring.
If you want people to learn anything, you have to first of all tell them that they’re right, then add whatever you’re trying to teach them as if it’s some nuance of whatever they’re right about. Even if it makes their original opinion completely wrong. It works surprisingly often.
Our egos have an outer layer of armor that prevents us from easily absorbing ideas unless they have a starting point of agreeing with whatever we already believe.
True for most sadly. But not for all.
I’m happy to be proven wrong. It means I learned something that day. And I love learning new things.
I feel the same way, but it’s good to be aware of our own biases - there’s a bit of an aphorism that goes around about advertising and propaganda, that it works best on people who think it doesn’t work on them. If we think we’re immune to something, we let our guard down a bit. I used to think of myself as a very rational, intelligent, realistic guy, but in recent years I came to realise that I was kind of using that to protect my ego - I was wrong about a lot of things, and I could always find excuses to justify my beliefs as rational.
Maybe I still make the same flaw, I don’t know. Nowadays, I try to stay more focused on being nice than being right. That way, even if I’m wrong, I’m not making people’s day worse.
I’m not always successful with that.
Self awareness is doubt. If you’re doubting you haven’t stopped improving. You’re doing well, based on what you’ve said - keep it up :)
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Classic Kahneman/Tversky here
Also a spin-off where Trolley Man cures incurable patients one by one using sacrifices of 5
Issue #1 or 5? You decide!
This got a bonus chuckle from me.
Can Trolley Man at least multi-track drift?
I keep seeing this image, were ist from?
Initial D parody.
While you are at that… https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=j0QSrhGw4cU
“collateral damage”
Still saves more lives than Homelander
Isn’t Homelander a villain though? I thought he was supposed to be a villain.
Edit: NM I didn’t realize Homelander was from The Boys. I honestly thought he was the guy in Guardians of The Galaxy 3
Edit 2: Apparently that character’s name is Adam Warlock.
Spoiler
Homelander is the villain in the boys.
Anyone who drinks milk on-screen is always a villain.
Let’s see, Milk is a symbol of innocence and purity in movies, and is often used to make the audience feel uncomfortable when a villain or anti-hero drinks it.
This is because milk is typically associated with childhood, which is considered the most innocent and pure time of life.
When a villain drinks milk, it can represent the consumption or destruction of innocence, and can be used to indicate the villain’s loss of innocence
Also, to signify Homelander being a man-child
I kinda think it’s more to create contrast than to signify eating innocence
Counterargument: Luke Skywalker.
At that point isn’t he? He created Kylo and then left everyone else to figure it out.
Not really a hero’s move
True hero’s move, really, retire and let others become heroes (half /s)
Yeah but blue milk tho. Might as well be cheese at that point
Myself? I’d prefer bacta. You NEVER say no to bacta
Ahh, kk. Never seen it, but I guess the two characters seem similar in that respect at least.
Hiding that piece of info behind a spoiler tag chef’s kiss.
The multiple layers of confusion gave me a laugh, thank you.
I remember reading The Infinity gauntlet comics and in it Adam warlock was supposed to be the greatest human being ever created.
And then they picked the actor that they chose for him and I’m just not seeing it.
You don’t like eyebrows?
Ugh, this guy’s gonna be a problem.
Like a whole thing 😫
The best part is that, by refusing to be killed themselves, they are making a choice to let the other people die, rendering their hypocrisy evident and their worry fully rendered moot
Yeah, but what if it was a ship full of assholes? I got shopping to do.
I mean, the boat appears to be pretty close to the coast, and not very big. I’d just call the coast guard and there are good chances that nobody dies.
To be honest they could actually swim to shore, it’s not impossible
It’s close to the second ghost rider (and maybe the first, been awhile since I dug up my old comics) who didn’t have powers until innocent blood was spilled (though typically it was the villain who spilled it).
I would read the shit out of this but 5 people I have never and will never meet who nobody knows will die painlessly and I’m just not sure of the moral implications.
The Dave Chappelle bit about Bill Cosby being a superhero… but he rapes.
I want more of this. Reminds me on the anime Darker than Black, where those with power always had to fulfill some contract to use their power, else they’d die.
Man, this anime is so underrated. I like it a lot. I question the artistic direction on the second season, but at least the ending wrapped up the whole show nicely.
A little correction, nobody really know what happens when a contractor doesn’t do that side-effect thingy. It is never mentioned if they would die, nor that it’s even implied. The way I see it, they’d simply develop strong impulse to do so.
So he killed Stan Lee?
And here was I thinking that this character was so terrible that it caused Stan Lee to spontaneously spring back into existence in order to make that opinion known.
