[IshKebab]

> The “quadrillion days of happiness” offered to a rational person gives away that such allegories are anthropomorphized just for the sake of presentation.

So what? It's still presented as if it's a interesting problem that needs to be "remedied", when in fact it's just a basic maths mistake.

If I said "ooo look at this paradox: 1 + 1 = 2, but if I add another one then we get 1 + 1 + 1 = 2, which is clearly false! I call this IshKebab's mugging.", you would rightly say "that is dumb; go away" rather than write a Wikipedia article about the "paradox" and "remedies".

> Similarly the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation, or else the correct answer would always be “do nothing”.

It absolutely wouldn't. I don't know how anyone with any morals could claim that.

[tacitusarc]

Interestingly, the trolley problem is decided every day, and humanity does not change tracks.

There are people who die waiting for organ donors, and a single donor could match multiple people. We do not find an appropriate donor and harvest them. This is the trolley problem, applied.

[rachofsunshine]

I would pull the lever in the trolley problem and don't support murdering people for organs.

The reason is that murdering people for organs has massive second-order effects: public fear, the desire to avoid medical care if harvesting is done in those contexts, disproportionate targeting of the organ harvesting onto the least fortunate, etc.

[tacitusarc]

The fact that forcibly harvesting someone’s organs against their will did not make your list is rather worrying. Most people would have moral hangups around that aspect.

[bee_rider]

Yea, it doesn’t seem quite right to say that the trolley problem isn’t about really people. I mean the physical mechanical system isn’t there but it is a direct abstraction of decisions we make every day.

[close04]

> the trolley problem isn’t about really people

My actual words quoted below give one extra detail that makes all the difference, one that I see people silently dropped in a rush to reply. The words were aimed at someone taking these problems in a too literal sense, as extra evidence that they are not to be taken as such but as food for though that has real life applicability.

> the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation

[IshKebab]

> We do not find an appropriate donor and harvest them. This is the trolley problem, applied.

I don't think that matches the trolley problem particularly well for all sorts of reasons. But anyway your point is irrelevant - his claim was that the trolley problem isn't about real humans, not that people would pull the lever.

Edit: never mind, I reread your comment and I think you were also agreeing with that.

[close04]

> his claim was that the trolley problem isn't about real humans

Is it though? Let's look at the comment [0] written 8h before your reply:

> the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation

As in "don't take things absolutely literally like you were doing, because you'll absolutely be wrong". You found a way to compound the mistake by dropping the critical information then taking absolutely literally what was left.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907977