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
I think I believe pulling the leverage is the right thing to do. I also have a feeling I wouldn’t be able to do it.
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
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.
I would hold the artist at gunpoint
until all my comrades have healthcare. Not a jokeDepends on who is tied to the tracks
Anyone who advocates not pulling the lever is anti-materialist and therefore wrong.
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.
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.
In theory yes. In practice, I’d probably be paralyzed by fear and self-doubt and cultural norms of not pulling the lever.
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
