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There doesn’t appear to be anyone on the trolley so I’d pull the lever while it’s going over in attempt to derail it
Multi-track drifting!
In theory yes. In practice, I’d probably be paralyzed by fear and self-doubt and cultural norms of not pulling the lever.
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Yeah I feel exactly the same way. I’m doing more good by pulling the lever, but I also don’t really want to kill that guy
Anyone who advocates not pulling the lever is anti-materialist and therefore wrong.
I really don’t think the answer is as clear cut as this
Let’s reframe it to this. You’re a surgeon and you have 5 patients that are about to die. You can save all of their lives and they’ll all make a full recovery if you kill a random guy and take all of their organs to transplant into your 5 patients
Is it really just as easy to say yes to killing that 1 guy for the 5 patients?
Edit notes:
Imo it’s pretty clear the trolley problem is exclusively focused on morality and only to be viewed in a vacuum without concerning oneself about stuff like broader societal implications. The reframing should thus be considered with the same purpose
I understand what a trolley problem is.
As a materialist I don’t agree that you can simply reframe the issue this way since the two situations are not equivalent.
When you have the choice to change the trolley track then the outcome is exactly clear and certain. Either 5 will die or 1 will die and there are no broader consequences for society beyond that. Like sure it will change which family grieves etc but society itself isn’t altered.
A world in which a surgeon might randomly kill you to save 5 others is a profoundly different situation since now we live in a world where might randomly be killed.
The flaw with trolley problemists who eschew materialism is that it leads them to believe that a trolley killing 1 or 5 is perfectly equivalent to a surgeon choosing to kill 1 healthy person to save 5. Actually these problems are not equivalent since the reframed example has profound broader implications for society. In problem A it’s a straightforward forced choice and since it’s forced by the material reality of the trolley track design and tying people to it the bystander has a choice without broader social implications whereas in problem B now every human on earth needs to fear sudden murder even in the absence of being tied to a trolley track.
I agree with what you’ve said but I think this is all out of scope for the thought experiment
Imo it’s pretty clear the trolley problem is exclusively focused on morality and only to be viewed in a vacuum without concerning oneself about stuff like broader societal implications. The reframing should thus be considered with the same purpose
But then you’re altering material reality itself to counter my materialism based response which seems to validate rather than invalidate the materialist response.
I’m not countering your response, I agree with you if we’re going to tackle it with a materialist approach. I’m re-introducing the problem with a narrower, more strict set of restrictions for consideration. I don’t think we’re even discussing the original problem anymore, moreso the “proper” way to go about it, if there even is one
Like, to trolley problemists, the morality of the decision hinges upon the moral decision tree of the bystander while the materialist response to these questions really just becomes more or less equivalent to consequentialism.
Yea that makes sense, I just always approach this problem strictly from an ethics pov because that’s what the authors intended
Well yeah but I think that’s the materialist criticism of the problem itself.
Like, the question implicitly imposes the view that the morality of a decision is centered on the decision tree we follow to reach that decision rather than upon a consideration of its consequences.
I don’t quite agree that consequentialism is what I mean by this but it’s something pretty close to consequentialism. Holistic material consequentialism maybe?
Like to the trolley problemists it’s usually a question about the moral agency of the bystander: is it right for that person to choose who lives or dies seems to be the contention. And when a materialist counters that “that’s not really what matters in terms of consequences” then the trolley problemist insists upon a vacuum of consequences which really just a denial of materialism itself.
If you have to eliminate certain consequences of a surgeon being allowed to murder people to save others, then we simply aren’t talking about a surgeon being allowed to murder people to save others.
Yea I’m definitely not simply talking about a surgeon being allowed to murder people to save others. This new viewpoint is supposed to dissuade people from answering “as a materialist”. I’m sure most, if not all of us agree that pulling the lever IS the correct thing to do, but arguing from a materialist perspective is completely divorced from reality
How many of us up there would actually think in the moment only about the material consequences of our choices? It completely disregards all the human emotions involved in the decision process. Maybe some people are just built different but this is why I don’t like the materialist approach
It’s interesting to think about but doesn’t actually answer the question
No well I think most of us will think “fuck 5 are about to die, only one guy over there, fuck I need to save these 5 people, time to pull that fucking lever” which is materialist.
That’s changing the situation. I don’t think it’s comparable. In the specific trolley problem instance, I would pull the lever. In the situation you describe I wouldn’t.
The difference between the two matters. The switch being one way is arbitrary and ultimately all individuals are in the same position. However, all 5 of your patients are terminally I’ll and only survive because you kill a healthy man. Your example changes the situation to reflect the man on bridge scenario rather than this one.
what if the lever has bird poop on it?
What kind of bird?
a good ol’ pigeon
I contract avian flu and kill one person to save five.
Trolleys have brakes and don’t go very fast. I’d just jump on and stop it.
dang it i never even saw that thread
if the people on the tracks are strangers yes of course. if you dont do anything you kill more people, it would not be worse to pull the lever on my concise.
it would not worse to pull the lever on my concises.
The act of doing nothing is a conscious action just as the act of pulling the lever is.
yeah thats how i feel about most scenarios in life. being a bystander is a choice.
Yes, but then I would also murder whoever set up this Saw-ass scenario.
Depends on who is tied to the tracks
I would hold the artist at gunpoint
until all my comrades have healthcare. Not a jokeSnap the lever off and attempt to throw it under the trolley to stop it
I’d kill the trolley driver and the person who owns the trolley company. Now nobody will want to drive it and nobody will want to start their own.
yeah I have the same position. I would also give this kind of ironic answer to avoid answering the question, because I don’t really know if I’d pull the lever or not
If the lever reflects a power dynamic, killing a slaveowner to free ten slaves, then that’s a lever that should exist and I’d pull it without thinking. You can’t wear white gloves while doing it but the slaveowners wouldn’t be there if not by choice. There’s a clear greater good option that breaks a dialectic which shouldn’t exist. I’ll always pull a lever with a liberation option and thank the trolley driver for their courage.
If the lever is killing generic people, it’s a false dilemma. That just makes it a stupid fuck-fuck game being played by the person with power and I instinctively hate that person. That’s the trolley company which is okaying this and every functionary of that company shares moral responsibility for it. When democrats tell me to vote for 99% Hitler because 100% Hitler will do four genocides, the only moral calculus there is to reject it for the same reason socialists are against all wars but class wars.
I agree on the first point. It depends on who these people are
tho I think this thought experiment is meant to be super abstract in order to gauge someone’s ethics. Personally, I’m leaning toward not pulling the lever because i’d probably feel more personally responsible for killing this one person than letting five people die
With both the problem and the thing it represents: it kinda depends how I’m feeling at the time.
This problem and the cashier asking me if I want a receipt or not invokes the exact same decision process in my brain
Last week I asked for receipt and then immediatly threw it away right in front of her just by inertia. Felt like such an asshole
Look if I’m being honest I’d probably try to save the people from being tied up. If it’s going slow enough that I’d have time to decide whether or not to pull the lever and it’s that close to the switch, I’d at least have time to pull someone to safety or try to cut the rope with a sharp rock if I don’t have a knife on me.
I know that’s not really an answer but i feel like pulling the lever is admitting defeat. I’m not playing this game you know
I know that’s not really an answer but i feel like pulling the lever is admitting defeat. I’m not playing this game you know
Fair enough. This question fucks me up every time I try thinking about it. Can’t make a decision
These moral hypotheticals are pointless. In terms of making difficult moral decisions, most people make their decision after imagining or reading about how someone they consider virtuous would do. In other words, it’s “what would Jesus do?” not “let’s imagine this hypothetical that is similar but not identical to the moral quandary I’m experiencing right now and use the answer I have for the hypothetical to inform my decision for the real deal.”
For this lever problem, you can approach it in two angles:
Imagining a hypothetical decision: This is what would Jesus/Muhammad/Buddha/Confucius/Aristotle/Francis of Asisi/Tolstoy/Lenin/MLK or any other virtuous figure do? To adequately answer this question, this would entail studying and understanding the life of the virtuous person. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be a famous person like Jesus. It could simply be a relative you admire. Your grandmother is the strongest person you’ve ever known, someone who faced so much bullshit in life but who faced and triumphed without compromising on her principles while having a defiant spirit, almost as if she’s mocking her bad luck for not being able to crush her spirit. What would she do if faced with this situation?
Studying an actual decision: This means studying instances where the lever has actually been pulled/not pulled and understanding the ramifications that comes from either decision. I don’t think this hypothetical has actually happened in real life, and no, I’m not talking about tough-decisions-that-carry-a-human-cost, but the actual situation of people tied up on rails about to be run over by a trolley. Obviously, if we had real-life examples, both of people who pulled the lever and people who didn’t, we can compare and contrast between the two groups and come to a reasonable conclusion about which choice is better. I think the reason why the hypothetical has staying power is precisely because it hasn’t actually happened in real life and lacks the real-life ramification of the decision that people can study. If everyone who pulls the lever in real-life becomes alcoholics suffering from PTSD while everyone who didn’t pull the lever in real-life go on become vegan, then this would obviously have a huge effect on whether you personally would pull the lever. How could it not?
