[TeMPOraL]

That's a specialized version of the question, is it really evil to kill evil people? But it's also a bit off-topic; the more important one is, are only evil people getting killed by drone strikes executed by people who (claim to) try to kill only evil people? The answer to that is a resounding no. We can debate the specifics of this, but it wasn't my point.

My point was, the concept of layers of indirection making perpetrating evil/immoral acts easier is a well-recognized one[0], and drone strikes are the usual example - the killer has no personal risk, and the act itself involves operating video game controllers while watching a low-resolution image of distant events. And, for many practical reasons, this has been embraced by the military. Cheaper, less trauma for soldiers, less bad press, less likely the soldier will hesitate or spare the lives of their targets.

And thus I'm asking: if that works so well for killing, and there isn't a big pushback against this[1], then why criticize the case where the similar levels of detachment are making people more likely to do good deeds? If people are more likely to donate to good causes further away than they are to those close to them, then why not be just happy that more people are donating to good causes?

--

[0] - It most likely has a formal name in psychology, but I'm not aware of it.

[1] - There is some pushback, but I don't see it rising to the level actually influencing any decision-making in the US.

[perl4ever]

>why criticize the case where the similar levels of detachment are making people more likely to do good deeds?

Keywords: Bangladesh arsenic UNICEF wells

[TeMPOraL]

Am I missing some context here? This keyphrase gives me some articles about how UNICEF is helping mitigate the problem of arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh. This is good, right? Or are they, or other charitable initiatives, somehow responsible for causing it in the first place?

[perl4ever]

>are they, or other charitable initiatives, somehow responsible for causing it in the first place

That is how the story goes. Millions of wells were dug via aid that turned out to be contaminated with arsenic then ingested by tens of millions of people. Many of whom suffered over the years thinking they were "cursed".

I don't know how culpable the aid organizations really were, but even if it's just one of those "truthy" things that isn't quite true, it represents what can happen when people are detached from consequences of trying to do good very vividly.

[s1artibartfast]

>My point was, the concept of layers of indirection making perpetrating evil/immoral acts easier is a well-recognized one

It seems that you are again assuming that drone strikes are evil immoral acts. Most people view civilian casualties in war as a trolley car problem, (e.g. a necessary evil in an overall moral action)

[c1ccccc1]

I don't really care what most people think. If I chose my beliefs based solely on what most people thought, I would be guilty of committing the bandwagon fallacy. So don't hide behind "most people". What do you think about this issue?

My own personal view is this: The Geneva convention forbids the killing and torture of non-combatants. The Geneva convention exists for a reason: without it, war would be more brutal and kill many more innocent people. Sure, it's easier to destroy the enemy if you don't worry too much about civilian casualties. But if both sides reason that way, the advantage to each cancels out, and the net outcome is just more civilian deaths.

It's cheap to say "oh it's a trolley problem" when we're talking about killing some innocent people thousands of miles away in order to take out an enemy general. Imagine if the civilians killed by each drone strike were all Americans. Want to kill that enemy commander? It'll cost you 5 American lives. Same logic from a trolley problem standpoint, but I expect you'd get some very different results on your poll.

[s1artibartfast]

I think that the killing of civilians is undesirable, but clearly moral under the right conditions. The proposition is not weather one should "worry too much about civilian casualties" but if they are morally justifiable at all.

Do you really hold that that it isn't acceptable to kill 1 non-combatant to save a greater number of non-combatants at a future date?

You can change the conditions or description, but it is still a trolly problem.

[TeMPOraL]

It is an iterated trolley problem.

Imagine the "default" track splitting into a hundred million tracks, which all cross and merge into and separate from each other. It's such a maze that nobody can really tell what path the trolley will take once it enters a particular track. There's a couple thousand people in blue shirts tied down to a single-digit number of those tracks. A hundred-million-way split is essentially a bump in the main track, which means the trolley will randomly pick one of the hundred million of directions.

The service track (which splits off the main track before the hundred-million split) has a couple redshirts tied to it, plus 50 yellow-shirts per each redshirt. If you flip the switch, the trolley is sure to travel down the service track.

Additionally, the rules of iterating the problem are: if you don't flip a switch, there's a small chance the game ends. If you do flip a switch, the game will always continue, and there's a small chance that next round, more blueshirts will be tied to some of the hundred million tracks, and a small chance that the trolley will go down the main track regardless of your choice.

What do you choose? The US government answer is essentially to jam the switch in the "to service track position", because "fuck it, we don't care about non-blue shirts, and besides, the trolley company pays us to make sure the trolleys keep going".

[s1artibartfast]

Overall, I think I agree with your analogy, which illustrates the complexity of the problem. If I follow, you are claiming that:

1. Lives saved by military intervention are unpredictable 2. The people killed by military intervention are categorically different than those saved 3. The number of lives saved changes over time. 4. Military intervention on average kills more than it saves (Today) 5. There are ulterior motives at play

OF these, I think 1-3 are pretty agreeable, 4 is unknown, and 5 is true, but generally overstated.

>What do you choose?

Given the enormous complexity of the problem, I would hire an organization of professionals to make lever choices, and support the scrutiny of this organization by competent 3rd parties.

I would be highly skeptical of anyone who claims that it is "evil" to ever pull the lever.

The real challenges are twofold:

First is the asymmetrical information between the professional lever pullers and the 3rd party critics. 3rd party critics have no visibility to the tracks and the lever pullers dont tell them if the blue shirts are one or a hundred track slips away from the trolly.

Second, The lever pullers are hired by the blueshirts, and individual blueshirts have radically different views on how many red/yellow shirt lives are worth one blueshirt life.

[TeMPOraL]

My claims are similar to which you identified, but stronger in some points, so let me put them explicitly.

1. Drone strikes aren't saving lives in an immediately obvious fashion ("these targets were about to launch an attack on us"), but only indirectly, if at all ("these targets may or may not have been planning some sort of attack in the future, which they may or may not have been able to execute; but we're sure they won't be planning or executing anything when they're dead"). The hundred million tracks are meant to show the degree of uncertainty about possible future attack and its casualties. Any given drone strike is unlikely to have saved anyone at all.

2. The people killed by drone strikes are of different nation than the one that does the killing. This is illustrated by the blue/other color split, and red/yellow illustrates enemy combatant/enemy civilian split. That they latter are tied together describes collateral damage.

3. The risk grows over time if the drone strikes continue. This is illustrated by the iteration rules. In the example, as long as the trolley keeps killing redshirts and yellowshirts, the number of blueshirts on the tracks tends to grow over time - and if it goes on long enough, the trolley will eventually follow the main track despite the switch being flipped, and will run over some blueshirts. This illustrates how each drone strike generates more hatred on the other side, creating more potential attackers and increasing motivation for performing an attack. Done long enough, an attack is guaranteed to happen. Conversely, stopping the strikes deescalates the issue, reduces the hatred - as illustrated by the game having a chance to end early if you don't flip the switch.

3a. The exact point I'm trying to make here: US drone strikes are creating and perpetuating the problem they are claimed to mitigate. Stopping them is the actual way to mitigate the problem.

4. As per point 1, the amount of lives saved by these attacks in the long run is unknown, but unless military intelligence is not an oxymoron it's claimed to be, it's most likely negative.

4a. From this follows my belief, reflected by using 1e8 tracks in the example, that the chance of actual attack happening and killing people is much smaller than the chance the enemy will lose their interest in the fight if they're no longer being terrorized. Not pulling the lever and waiting for the game to finish is a loss-of-life-minimizing strategy in my example.

5. There are ulterior motives, and there are many of them. That's somewhat of a side topic, though. But I do claim that these motives are enough to blind the decision-making apparatus to the point 3a - drone strikes are causing the risk, not reducing it.

> Given the enormous complexity of the problem, I would hire an organization of professionals to make lever choices, and support the scrutiny of this organization by competent 3rd parties.

That's the right view in the abstract, but in reality, the professionals running the show are professional PR people ordering professional lever pullers to pull the lever. That's not to say the politicians and the military are bad at their jobs - they're OK, but they're also not focusing on minimizing loss of life long-term.

> I would be highly skeptical of anyone who claims that it is "evil" to ever pull the lever.

It isn't always evil to pull the lever here - it just almost always is. Exceptions are few and far between.

> 3rd party critics have no visibility to the tracks and the lever pullers dont tell them if the blue shirts are one or a hundred track slips away from the trolly.

This is a line of reasoning that's commonly used to defend intelligence agencies - "they won't announce out loud when they save everyone from doom, because that would be defeating their ability to stave off another disaster". However, as far as I know/read, to the degree various journalists and investigators were able to dig out information, there aren't any secret success stories they're hiding. So I'm biased strongly against trusting this line of reasoning alone.

> Second, The lever pullers are hired by the blueshirts, and individual blueshirts have radically different views on how many red/yellow shirt lives are worth one blueshirt life.

That's true, but the lever pullers are also good at playing up the need for pulling the level, and then there's also the trolley company - which is meant to depict, in a generalized way, how the military–industrial complex makes money on perpetuating the killing.

[kaba0]

Why is there war in the first place?

Also, it is a created trolley car problem not the trolley car problem. And creating such a situation instead of coming across it is definitely morally evil.

[s1artibartfast]

How is it a new trolly problem? Technology may have changed, but I don't see how that changes the morality.

If it is moral to minimize the deaths by pulling a lever, shouldn't it also be moral to invent the lever?

Someone can certainly argue that drone strikes are not always an effective way to save lives, but if they are, I don't see an argument that makes them evil.

[olyjohn]

Do most people really think that? I kind of doubt it.

[s1artibartfast]

here is some survey data from 2015 showing that the majory approves of drone strikes with a 58 to 35 approval.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/05/28/public-conti...