Post by @mattdm@hachyderm.io

There is a correct solution to the trolley problem.

It is this: you design the system with positive train control. You make it so the trolley cannot enter a section where there are people, and you make it so the trolley can be stopped quickly if something goes wrong.

I've been told that this is cheating, a cop-out, or avoiding the "interesting" aspects of the question. I don't think it is. Framing the world as a series of individual can't-win situations and lose-lose decisions _is_ the problem.

Don't do that.

6 Replies

10 Boosts

Dustin D. Wind

@MySideIsHumanity@myprivate.social 4 hr. ago

@mattdm @slothrop "Philosophical questions" like this or "who do you kick off the life raft", remind me very much of "push-polling":

Supposedly "just asking questions", for the purpose of skewing people's perspective.

If zero-sum were how civilization really works (instead of synergy), we'd still be back in prehistory…
with patriarchal bandit clans stealing the food from farming villages, murdering the men and children, then dragging the women off to impregnate them with their own.

gittaca

@gittaca@chaos.social 3 hr. ago

@MySideIsHumanity @mattdm @slothrop There's indeed research about those dilemma scenarios, and a whole critique of the scenario setups: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Lind_(Psychologe)#Schriften
Admittedly, I'm not sure which of those, but I've heard that guy worked on more teachable dilemmas.

Georg Lind (Psychologe)

deutscher Psychologe und Professor für Erziehungswissenschaft

Dustin D. Wind

@MySideIsHumanity@myprivate.social 3 hr. ago

@gittaca @mattdm @slothrop If so (and I don't know of any reason to doubt it), all of my sympathies to him.

I imagine it must be a special kind of frustrating-bordering-on-maddening to try to create a larger framework to enlighten people… only to be best known for a question, innocent in and of itself (and useful under sharply-limited circumstances), that's being amplified out of its context to fuel a false dichotomy of how to view society.

Em :official_verified:

@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange 4 hr. ago

@mattdm @saptaks

Jered Floyd

@jered@metasocial.com 4 hr. ago

@mattdm Anyone who says that is cheating is perhaps having the wrong conversation.

The "Trolley problem" (and related examples) are specifically thought experiments for the discussion or moral philosophy, e.g. an exploration of utilitarianism. Anyone who is trying to apply this to empirical engineering challenges is, er, already off the rails.
1/2

Jered Floyd

@jered@metasocial.com 4 hr. ago

@mattdm If we are, on the other hand, having a (tedious) discussion of moral philosophy, you would be in the wrong in proposing empirical workarounds. The thought experiment has nothing in particular to do with trolleys, and was originally formulated in terms of angry mobs.

You can't engineer your way out of abstract philosophical discussions (although you can, perhaps, gnaw off your own leg to escape them). 2/2