I'm sure you know the train question. If a train is going along and the conductor sees a child on the rails, but can change rails to another track, but that one has five. What do you do?
The actual answer is changing tracks has the train going slow so it doesn't derail. I have had family in the train engineering business for generations. So the actual answer is, the brakes you're going slow enough to stop easily.
I realized that yesterday while watching some old Doctor Who near a train station.
Anyway, the reason why I bring it up is I am arguing with someone that the answer is there, but not given by the original question. Also, no one thought to ask anyone in the train industry. I looked the guy up, and he's a lefty. It makes me realize that much of our society is based on the idea of false choices. There is always another answer, but the media and government act as if there is no alternatives. Then we make sure to ignore all evidence pointing to alternatives. This is society, trying to make a choice while the train stops on its own.
Check out what’s known as the Hegelian Dialectic
It boils the world down to “Thesis” / “Anti-Thesis” / “Synthesis” or in a more understandable parlance “Problem” / “Reaction” / “Solution” - this is the approach of those who govern society, they present us (through control of the media and all other institutions) a “Problem” (“School shootings are happening!!”), a “Reaction” (“This would never have happened if guns were illegal!”), and then a “Solution” (“We’ve heard our constituents! Guns are now illegal!”)
This approach is repeated ad-infinitium across all areas of “society” in order to shape and mold it to their desires.
Ah fuck, it's Mass Effect 3 all over again!
Whoa, true.
I haven't heard that since uni. Yes, it is the dialect. Good point. The guy I was arguing with also said it was for drones and cars. I pointed out it's already been solved. A drone has to get permission to fire, it's not automatic. The car hits the brakes, and the driver is warned way before. You'll notice the other commenters still don't believe it.
You misstated the trolly problem & got it backwards:
The point is that you can do nothing and 5 die, or pull the lever and 1 dies. The answer reveals things about yourself.
People who pull choose to have 5 lives over 1. It's simple and utilitarian. The fact that they "kill" the 1 is irrelevant because they consider doing nothing to be "killing" the 5 all the same. A puller knows how to take responsibility and be a man.
People who refuse to pull are cowards who know that society won't punish them for doing nothing because laws don't work that way, and they are afraid of the personal consequences if they pull. So they act selfishly and let 5 people die because at least then they won't get in trouble. Of course these people invent all kinds of bullshit excuses as to why they don't pull because nobody likes to admit being a selfish coward.
No that's not the "actual answer" it's being a double coward and refusing to engage with the question by trying to change the rules of the hypothetical.
Because it's a hypothetical not real life. It doesn't have to be a fucking trolly, it can be anything. Nobody gives a shit if it's "realistic" or not.
IMO you're a non-puller who just doesn't want to admit it and can't cope.
I'm totally on board with your pull/no-pull assessment, but quite against your insinuations against OP for cooking up their own independent response.
OP is under no obligation to play along with their version of rules for the hypothetical situation just because the asker proposed it first. If it's a debate between friends and you have already mutually declared the rules of the hypothetical you shouldn't pussy out after the fact, but actually agreeing to play their game is always the first step.Telling people who would unilaterally impose terms on you to fuck off is categorically not cowardice.
False dichotomies are a real and significant method of societal manipulation. (EG lock down and take the vax, or everyone's grandma dies) Imposing your own will on the boundaries and rules authority figures presuppose for you is a valuable act that more people should exercise, as a bulwark against creeping corruption.
Sure if you take it to extremes you end up with sovereign citizen wackery, but that's no worse than blind obedience. A better citizen pragmatically exercises their own independence against being used, because not only do they themselves suffer from being used, but blind obedience is inevitably used as force to punish other innocent dissenters.
He literally is. that's how hypotheticals work.
It is when you're a little bitch who is refusing to answer a hypothetical.
A hypothetical is not a "false dichotomy" because it is in the rules of the hypo that it is not false. Fictional and false are different things.
Again, only idiots and little bitches blindly do everything they're told.
If I, a stranger, propose a hypothetical where you have to suck ten dicks or take it in the ass, you're under no obligation to start degrading yourself by pondering how hard you're hypothetically getting reamed. Telling me to just fuck off and go suck twenty myself isn't cowardice, it's a chad move.
Friends can maybe fuck around like that, but strangers should know or be taught to have more respect for others' autonomy.
yes
https://twitter.com/BlueyAnon/status/1628503396796989440
This is why ethical dilemmas/thought experiments are ultimately silly, even though they can be fun to debate. I can imagine there are many real life scenarios where actively choosing to be a "non-puller" is the correct non-cowardly choice. He just sounds to me like a creative thinker who wanted to make a statement about the many dichotomies people take for granted. A mere selfish coward trying to rationalize or cope with their cowardly ways would not be publicly pondering an alternate explanation to a thought experiment. Most people wouldn't even think of themselves as non-pullers - unless they had strongly reasoned principles for being that way, and in a real situation they might actually be pullers. Cowards and heroes are created in the moment, and the way someone acts in one situation won't be how they act in all situations.
Unless he has had some kind of personal tragedy where he ended up being a non-puller, and can't live with himself, and this random post is his way of dealing with that. I doubt it...
But "You're a non-puller who just doesn't want to admit it!" did give me a good laugh. It's like a line from a Seinfeld episode.
Lmao - the Seinfeld gang probably would have gone for the XTREME TROLLEY DOUBLE TRACK DRIFT:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/096/630/bc7.png
Wew lad. He's positioning himself as the conductor who can save everyone, and you give this in response.
To a degree, it is cowardly, but it's not necessarily a "getting in trouble" concern. It can be the intentional action that directly results in taking a life that weighs on them. It's a more positive outcome, but their personal morals may weigh heavier in doing that.
I mean isn't letting letting people die because you're scared of emotional pain you just another way of describing cowardice? It feels like the degree to which it is cowardice is 100%
I suppose it is. Just an unusual source of fear.
Which is a bullshit "ha ha I'm kirk and I cheated the kobiashi maru" response. Doesn't work.
I honestly do not agree, because that would mean this person thinks it is 100% okay and not at all "taking lives" to stand by and watch 5 people die when you literally could just pull a lever to save them.
Allow me to put this another way: What if there is a group of children drowning in a pool, and you can push a button which empties the pool to save all the children, but instead of pushing the button, you crouch at the edge of the pool and morbidly watch them die because it makes your dick hard to watch children struggle and die.
According to the non-puller, you'd be 100% A-ok to behave that way because hey, you didn't have any duty or obligation to save those kids since you didn't throw them into the pool to begin with, so you never engaged in an "intentional action that directly results in taking a life", so no judgments, my guy!
Yeah, I call bullshit. Everyone knows the concept of how you can cause an outcome through an act or omission. Everyone knows how lies of omission. The fact that society does not punish omissions means shitty selfish humans are trained to always default to omission in order to evade getting in trouble.
A real man would have 5 dead on his conscience. The selfish coward lies to himself and says those 5 were somehow not his fault as a cope.
The original hypothetical is from the point of view of a bystander standing next to a switch.
The only control they have over the trolley is to either pull the switch or not pull the switch. We can go on to assume that the trolley is unmanned, so shouting won't help. Perhaps the trolley operator is running along behind after the trolley ran off down the hill.
The trolley operator died suddenly.
https://twitter.com/DiedSuddenly_/status/1594828053980807169?s=20&t=JSHEnp7zNf97Dfew0GTh6g
You are morally responsible for the actions you take; that is universally agreed upon (except by the modern Left with "minorities").
Whether or not you are culpable for inaction poses an interesting question.
Allow me to restate the trolley problem another way:
What do you do?
The funny thing is, you're all talk about lever-pulling. You're a non-puller. We're all non-pullers.
In fact, all of human society today exists on the implicit assumption that everyone is a non-puller.
Not in the context of the trolley problem, it's very cut and dry. you're responsible. whether society punishes you or not is irrelevant.
That's a bad hypothetical because that is unknowable knowledge. Only God would know something like that.
False.
False. Society exists because brave good men are willing to sacrifice themselves for the unworthy shits that comprise humanity out of principle.
That's a lot of words to just say "Wrong", and it still doesn't make you correct.
You haven't shot anyone to stop them killing multiple people, and I know for a fact you believe such people exist in real life. Ergo, you're a non-puller, just like the rest of us.
Not only do you NOT know any of that for a fact, it's genuinely fucking stupid for you to even consider such knowledge within the realm of possibility.
Idk if you're really young or really stupid but I feel like dealing with you is killing my brain cells.
I might be imagining a different trolley problem, the meme'd one.
From knowyourmeme:
This one doesn't give an option of braking since you're not the conductor (and presumably can't communicate to him in time). Your argument opponent might be thinking of this problem.
For your example, it isn't clear to me how the hypothetical ability to change rails implies that the train is going slowly enough to stop and prevent running anyone over.
That's the thing, the hypothetical doesn't work because humanity solves the problem. Those who demand only one of two choices are unable to realize that the answer could already be solved without either of the given answers happening in real life. The Buddhist idea of Mu, or the question is fundamentally wrong, must be part of the debate or the reality of the world and it's people will not be considered.
I would remove the gun. Transporters have buffers for a reason. I would lean the building against another one so everyone has time to get out.
For every hypothetical dichotomy, there are other options not given.
I've also heard a variation where there's people on the train, and you can divert the train off the tracks but it will kill everyone on board.
And there's the shoving a fat guy in front of the train that will stop it before it hits the people.
Is the fat guy J.B. Pritzker? Because if so, I wouldn't stop someone from shoving him onto the tracks.
There are ways to brake a train both from the conductor or from the station.
"Cut the rope. Free the people."
"...Listen here you little shit"
They come up with false dichotomies so they can always appear the moral superior. That's how ideologues work. They don't want actual debate, only to feel like they are correct.
This is why I don't believe in the party system. There is no way one of two options is correct.
No you pull right as the train crosses close to the switcher which will cause it to fly off the rails and then land safely further along the track, thus saving everyone.
I'm willing to accept this one so long as the conductor is Donkey Kong.
Obviously it's to make the train crash into the feminist rally by "accident".
I think having a successful job and waving as you pass would be enough of a derailment of their opinion.
Enjoy paying that tax. Women don't pay net tax over their lifetimes.