How many lives would you save, if any?

call batman

How is Batman going to stop a train? The sensible answer is to call Superman.

Panic and faint and hopefully land on the switch.

what is the relative hotness of the group of people / person?

what is the relative hotness of the group of people / person?

well.

my browser has never done that before.

of all the replies not worth making twice.

It does quite depend on the sole person and the group, doesn't it? If it's your mother versus a gaggle of Millwall fans...

crimson hexagain, would you rather have to have sex with a dog or a cat if there was a man pointing a gun at a child telling you to

would you rather there was an earthquake or a toxic chemical plant leakage in your town

would you rather lose your genitalia or your eyes

or have their positions swapped but their faculties retained

if the child has a gun pointing at it it's in no position to be making freaky demands imo

save the group

would you rather be caught masturbating by your surviving grandparents or commit clandestine incest

altho yeah what are the characteristics of the various people - if its a bunch of olds vs. a baby I'm savin the baby for ex.

Do nothing.

I remembered this question popping up in psychology class instead of philosophy,
And I remembered thinking this experiment would be better taught in business/marketing class instead.

Even if I had to pull the lever to save my own life, pretty sure I would still do nothing. It's such a chore to pull a lever.

Or do they not do the second question in philosophy class?

guns or butter? you have to dress up as one and beat a pig to death

trolley = shopping cart afaic

so this question just makes me lol

xxxp levers are so 20th century...

pull the lever duh

would you rather there was an earthquake or a toxic chemical plant leakage in your town

I'm rather curious about this earthquake leakage idea?

an oncoming trolly what?

i don't like levers

can we make it a button

or a dial

would you rather vomit or shit right this second

oncoming troll

http://www.avensis.in/images/personal_trollface_hd.png

CLANG CLANG CLANG

xxxp levers are so 20th century...

I think there's an app for this...

if you pull the lever you could you be arrested for murder right?

i remember this coming up in like philo 101 and my argument was (and still is) that the basic problem here is misapprehension of agency slash and/or consequence.

if you form the question as there are 2 train tracks, both with trains that are about to start - one has a bunch of people on it, one has a single person on it. you can either pull a lever that stops the train headed for a bunch of people or the train headed for one person, and you only have time to pull one lever. which do you pull? i think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would honestly choose to pull the lever that saves the single person.

The version I was taught you had to shoot someone or something drastic like that.

maybe I just don't "get it" but why is this an interesting question. why do you not save the gurop

definitely voting for i don't know

because the group is the lumineers

The problem is that these situations never crop up. With the trolley, it wouldn't really occur to me to flip switches or evaluate least number of deaths or anything. I would probably look around for something to put in front of the trolley - not myself! - that might stop it from killing anyone. Even if this were obviously futile, it would be what I would do. I dunno. What I do know is that these thought experiments are kind of pointless. For example, if I went back in time - let's say 1930 - and had an opportunity to kill Hitler, as is standard, I wouldn't ruin my own life on a murder rap just to save 6 million Jews. I'd kid myself on that I'd find a sneakier way to change history, but this decision would not be based on philosophical questions of the acceptability of murder in certain circumstances divided by the acceptability of a certain number of dead Jews. I would just be motionless in terror, as usual. Same with the trolley I guess.

I appreciate those who answered seriously.

For my info, check out the Wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

It was originally published by the British philosopher Philippa Foot.

There are many variations of it, including some that typically add other variables, such as the "Fat Man" and the "Transplant".

Also, there is another similar thought experiment that informally goes by the name of "the lorry driver", which is about moral luck, if I remember it correctly. This one is actually better and kind of depressed me when I first read about it. There are many versions of it, as well.

you have to change your first name to either Philippa or Foot, otherwise a fat man will perform a transplant on you

there is a depressed lorry driver. do you offer him a chocolate bar or a jar full of beans with a sticker on the side reading 'moral luck'

good work imago

frogbs, it is an interesting question because you put your moral compass into a real-life situation. It is like putting your ideology/ideals/beliefs to the test.

There are all sorts of information you can take out and know about yourself from answering this question. It is quite nice.

But to put it bluntly, there are three major answers, I know we have philosophy PhDs here so I'll let them elaborate, but the most common answer is the utilitarian perspective (essentially, "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong").

The result is not the interesting part, it is the explanation -- the "why".

you have to give 100 handjobs to one child molestor or 1 handjob to 100 child molestors

maybe I just don't "get it" but why is this an interesting question. why do you not save the gurop

Because to save the group you have to actively kill someone (you have to act in order to pull the switch), whereas not saving the group just consists in letting them die (you let the switch stay unpulled). It's easy to think that there's a moral difference between killing and letting die. But the first thing you learn from the trolley problem is that most of us aren't really comfortable with that distinction. Most of us think that abstaining from pulling the switch is every bit as active as pulling the switch.

The interesting part is you are offered two scenarios in which the outcomes are the same but
You are loathe to participate in one. so it is a question how to market for similar things like
Getting people to save for retirement, recycle etc...

Hehe!

Philip, what you said there totally reminded me of Bill Hicks's businessman/marketer skit.

Fucking philosophy

amen brother, i tried to tear it down from the inside but to no avail

if you could increase the quantity of philosophy threads on ilx, but the risk is that they might turn out like this one, would you push a fat dude in front of a trolley?

If you could burn all philosophy tracts would u use a zippo or matches? The wrong answer results in a fat handjob in a shopping trolley from two cats, one of which is a just war.

I want to see what c21m50nh3x460n keeps as reading material in his bathroom.

i want to force him to drink bleach

How many loaves would you save, if any?

You see an oncoming bread slicer on the street. It is headed on a railway track that has a loaf of rye tied to it. You don't actually know if it's a good loaf of rye. It could be whatever bullshit they serve at Friendly's. There is also a connecting railway track, but this has a single slice of sourdough tied to it -- again, you have no idea...

Fucking philosophy

― the norman wisdom of gaffers (darraghmac), Friday, May 3, 2013 12:31 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This thread is to philosophy what I Fucking Love Science is to science.

experiment done in first-year philosophy

If anyone claims to know what they would do, it is merely an unverified claim based solely on their inserting themselves into this rather cruel fantasy and imagining things about themselves.

iirc acc to the talmud if your city is besieged and the attackers threaten to kill everyone unless you send out one random person to die, you are obligated (or allowed? this is the part i'm fuzziest on) to send someone out to die. however if they specify a specific person to be sent out to be killed or they'll slaughter the city, you can't send that person out. iirc. so i think the talmud would say that in the trolley case if you don't know who the individual on the tracks is, you can flip the switch to kill him instead of the group. maybe?

Aimless, I try to be in and out of the washroom as quickly as possible.

Not sure what you're getting at, though.

I appreciate those who answered seriously.

The 'fat man' scenario is definitely cruel. I hope they don't still use that in ethics classes.

jake and the fat man scenario

Not when I was at university, lazulum. I heard about that much later.

We did do the lorry driver one. Again, that one was very cruel.

i'd love to know more about cr1mS0Nh3Xag0N the college years

iirc acc to the talmud if your city is besieged and the attackers threaten to kill everyone unless you send out one random person to die, you are obligated (or allowed? this is the part i'm fuzziest on) to send someone out to die. however if they specify a specific person to be sent out to be killed or they'll slaughter the city, you can't send that person out. iirc. so i think the talmud would say that in the trolley case if you don't know who the individual on the tracks is, you can flip the switch to kill him instead of the group. maybe?

― Mordy, Thursday, May 2, 2013 8:58 PM (30 minutes ago)

you should totally try to get this published

talmudic answers to annoying philosophy thought experiments is a great book idea

Old Jews Solving Dilemmas

should i research it thoroughly or include all the uncertainties and vague conclusions?

I'd read/buy it. But I have an affinity for Judaism. (It all comes back to Borges!)

"things i vaguely remember from yeshiva"

Would it be too farfetched to include some Kabbalah goodness in there?

Maybe you could just ask a handful of rabbis each question and print their responses.

"thought experiment" is such a generous term.

you're walking on a train and observing somebody driving next to the train and there's some lanterns or something is a thought experiment.

this is like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LahcSFleKm8

except i love that song

I try to be in and out of the washroom as quickly as possible.

Then, are you are saying that you do not have any reading material available in the "washroom" of your current residence, making you, if true, a non-reader while accomplishing your bowel movements?

(strokes chin and drawls:)

Ve-ry in-ter-est-ing.

CLOVES because of the giant vevo ad at the bottom i thought u were linking to ray j "i hit it first" i was tryna figure that out

wait, who designed this "experiment"? how is it even legal at all? wtf

Someone call the thought police.

The thought police, they live inside of my head.
The thought police, they come to me in my bed.
The thought police, they're coming to arrest me, oh no.

Yeah can anybody think of a precedent for this from a legal perspective?

I mean the trauma would be bad enough regardless of what you do but would utilitarian action land you in jail on top of that?

oh man i read the comments on the city high track and found out that this group bastille had done a cover of it and holy shit it is terrible and i'm sorry i read the comments and i'm sorry i ever heard of bastille. if i could pull a switch to send the trolley back in time to kill bastille that's sort of appealing right now.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this one neat track to save 6 lives

lol

Who would you rather start a small business with: Janet Reno after a safari, or the fat guy from My Name Is Earl?

would you rather go swing dancing w/ a chimpanzee wearing the skin of madonna as a dress or an enlightened guy fieri who was inside-out?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

no option for Well, D is what I do, so, yo, listen up: I put a towel on the floor by the two inch gap under the door. Now they can't see me any more. Check the locks so they can't clock, but they can listen. There'll be no barging in and there'll be no dissing.