[capableweb]

That's interesting. I didn't consider any legal liabilities at all, and would easily break the law in order to sacrifice one person in trade for five people. I also didn't consider doing "nothing", not pulling the lever was also an act, and I didn't "see" any options doing nothing.

Fun to see how differently people approach these ones :)

[praptak]

Actual law strongly discerns between action and inaction. For example the Polish penal code says you can only be criminally liable for a result of inaction only if you had a specific legal obligation to prevent it.

[capableweb]

That's ok, it wouldn't change my mind anyway. If I can prevent more people from getting hurt, I'd be willing to break the law and take the punishment.

[tut-urut-utut]

Would you kill your child to save two politicians you hate the most, one annoying youtuber, a neighbour who goes on your nerves for ages and two complete strangers?

[praptak]

You didn't specify whether the child is annoying.

[cortic]

> [I] would easily break the law in order to sacrifice one person in trade for five people.

This is a quite disturbing statement. So many psychopathic examples; If you were a doctor would you randomly kill healthy people with compatible organs to multiple patients? Or a researcher inflicting gruesome deaths to thousands of innocent healthy people to save millions later...

In fact we could simplify your statement further; The ends always justify the means., and so endorsing all terrorism and war, even genocide; whenever the ends is enough peace to make a net positive.

[capableweb]

> This is a quite disturbing statement

So it is to be human :)

> If you were a doctor would you randomly kill healthy people

No.

> researcher inflicting gruesome deaths to thousands of innocent healthy people to save millions later

If it was guaranteed to save millions later, I'd think about it, if we remove the "gruesome" and "healthy people" parts. But "inflicting gruesome deaths to thousands of innocent healthy people" for the mere possibility of saving millions later? No.

It all depends on the context obvious, as life is never between two binary choices or black VS white.

I don't think it's so disturbing to wanting to help a bigger part. I (and many others) already do this constantly by protesting and striking. Strikes generally impacts people who don't actually have anything to do with what you're striking against (example: when doctors strike, it hurts sick people), but in order for you and your colleagues to make a wage you can actually survive on, it does sometimes justify the means.

[Etherlord87]

> If you were a doctor would you randomly kill healthy people with compatible organs to multiple patients?

> > No.

Why not? It's clearly a different approach than your original to turn the lever to kill a person in order to save 5 other people. So what changed?

> researcher inflicting gruesome deaths to thousands of innocent healthy people to save millions later

> > If it was guaranteed to save millions later, I'd think about it, if we remove the "gruesome" and "healthy people" parts.

So you're willing to turn the lever to save 5 people because it's seemingly obvious those 5 people will therefore be saved (reasonable to me) and you see no problem killing 1 person, to reference your previous post, not only you would do that, you would easily break the law to do that! However, when it comes to killing thousands, in order to save millions, so the "net gain" is now not 4 but millions, and it's no longer the same order of magnitude, but it's a difference of 3 orders of magnitude, even if we remove the "gruesome" and "healthy people" parts, you will only "think about it"???? :D

> It all depends on the context

It seems to me you don't care about the context when it comes to killing one person, but once the stakes are higher and involve thousands, you hesitate. So I too find it disturbing, not just that you don't want to treat people individually and just consider the outcome of the trolley dilemma as +4 gain, rather than killing to save, but also the automatic disregard to individual rights creates a portrait of a person very dangerous to the society.

[galangalalgol]

What about the standard but missing question. If there is no lever but someone you can push into the tracks to divert the trolley, would you? If there is no one to push, would you jump in the tracks yourself?

[zild3d]

The opposite can also be seen as quite disturbing. Deciding to not save the lives of (net) 4 people, because you don't want to break a law

[1602]

This is not the opposite here. The opposite is to not save lives of some people at the expense of taking life of another, i.e. the ends do not justify the means. It is a moral dilemma and whether you break or not break a law does not matter nor should it exclusively influence a decision here (I mean to do harm, just because you abide orders - that's immoral).

[Brendinooo]

Seems like textbook overthinking. We’re talking about a specific situation here: a trolley. Doesn’t have to extrapolate to other scenarios.

[cortic]

I was responding to someone who was generalizing, its not in any way pedantic to put a generalization to the test.

I'm also quite surprised that someone could imply overthinking as a negative on HN. Gaining a deeper understanding of something, even modern philosophy, is intellectually useful. You should not under-think things, it does you a disservice to skip over the flaws and paradoxes in the world.

[Brendinooo]

I overthink a lot, I’m not against the concept. But I do need people to counterbalance that impulse of mine sometimes. So I’m just representing that side here.

Also, I think there’s a tendency in philosophy to end up in places you just don’t need to go. Zeno says it’s impossible to walk to a destination; Diogenes counters by walking to a destination.

Sometimes a trolley problem is just a trolley problem, not a side effect from some universal theory of everything.

A law that says “don’t pull this lever” or whatever is different than “don’t kill a healthy person and harvest his organs”.

[com2kid]

> The ends always justify the means., and so endorsing all terrorism and war, even genocide; whenever the ends is enough peace to make a net positive.

That has literally been humanities M.O. for thousands of years.

History is written by the victors, and somehow the books start off with mentions of moral superiority. Strange that.

"He unified a warring country, bringing an end to a century of strife and violence!"

"His conquest allowed for the formation of a national identity, bringing the people together."

etc. etc.

[Dudeman112]

>In fact we could simplify your statement further; The ends always justify the means., and so endorsing all terrorism and war, even genocide; whenever the ends is enough peace to make a net positive

On the other hand, you seem to be arguing that the means justify the end. So you'd let all the terrorism and war, even genocide, go ahead if it took not having to stain your hands to stop it

On the killing 1 person to save 5 lives example, it seems like your answer is "I wouldn't do it", which for the people actually being killed is equivalent to killing 5 people to save 1 person ( but what really matters is that you weren't the one personally killing the 5 people )

[sneak]

On what basis do you assert that not pulling is also an act? It seems to me that you are asserting inaction == action which, to me, is false.

[JoshCole]

It can help to understand why some people think inaction is an action by abstracting the problem such that you can model it in a computer using standard decision problem algorithms. When you do that you have an initial state and you have two edges and they lead to terminal outcome nodes. The choice of which edge to take is an action. This isn't (usually) controversial. People generally call the do nothing action an action in these circumstances: game theory extensive form will call it that, as will Q learning, and often you'll see the same framing even in things like the expecti minimax algorithm though sometimes they'll prefer to call it a move.

In my estimation, inaction only seems to not be an action, because people are afraid of the idea that they are causally connected with outcomes in which things are killed - they want to avoid tit for tat game theoretic follow on concerns that aren't part of the game definition but might be implied by it. I think for myself, I discount this concern, because I assume policies of mercy are preferred to policies of judgement - the world is so complex and hard and some err isn't just reasonable, but inevitable. Not allowing for mercy in response to harm from decisions seems more likely to trap in tit for tat. So intent ends up mattering to me much more than the outcome when I consider the follow-on games that are implied.

[capableweb]

I can either pull the lever or I can not pull the lever. Choosing to not pulling the lever when I know I can save others, would be me making the choice to not saving others.

[sneak]

You could also leave the room, put on a movie, get accidentally distracted, et c. Do these all carry the same weight to you?

[bregma]

There is a reason why negligence is not considered a defence in law.

[Dudeman112]

>Do these all carry the same weight to you?

Yes. Alas, we humans ( including myself ) are quite good at not feeling responsible if the issue isn't staring us in the face

[com2kid]

> On what basis do you assert that not pulling is also an act?

A student not doing their homework is an action, correct? That is why their grade is penalized, for not acting.

If someone doesn't turn on the fan in the bathroom during a shower and the walls get moldy, that is an inaction that the person will be blamed for!

[sneak]

The student opted in to school and the responsibilities associated thereto.