A trolley problem

What you’ve omitted to mention is that the gangsters aboard train 1 have with them a stock of deadly plague-spreading biological agents, with which they intend to infect every city and town that their train passes through, causing untold suffering and death. And given that the line train 2 is on was in a bad state anyway – it was last year and it probably still will be next year – it makes more sense for the international c -ahem- the hypothetical pointsman to concentrate on stopping the new and unknown menace of train 1.

(I don’t endorse this argument, but I think yours is vulnerable to it. Simply saying “No aggressive wars! No imperialist interventions! No, not even this one!” and nipping the whole thing in the bud seems more effective to me.)

On Twitter somebody graphically posed the trolley problem with McCain’s doctor at the switch.

It’s always seemed to me that the trouble with trolley problems is that they tend to get into hypotheticals that you can’t really know/weigh properly — here, for example, the ten people the gangsters are supposedly going to kill. As a result, while they may confront ethical issues, they are too abstract to address actual decision-making.

Given that you are trying to build the problem around military intervention, shouldn’t the ‘normal’ train (10 vs 1) be a “Large Man” variant? Military intervention usually involves pushing someone onto the track.

Also, would it matter if the 10 people (normal train) were the last 10 people of thier respective racial/ethnic group? Just trying to figure out if genocide might be a special case that needs to be explicitly exempted.

Perhaps the most moral choice is to do nothing at all. The second and third order effects of choosing to save a group of unique individuals with a network of connections vs one unique individual with a network of connections are impossible to predict. It’s not a black and white matter of the number of biological consciousnesses saved, as life vs death means very little in biology (see: Planet Earth and Planet Earth II).

For this binary choice, I’d say a human doesn’t have the knowledge needed to properly decide who gets to live and who gets to die, so it would be better to see how fate/reality/destiny/whatever we’d like to call actions that don’t involve our own conscious choices plays out rather than believing (with very little support or evidence) that we know what’s best. Either that or we should step onto the tracks ourselves in an attempt to slow the trolley even a tiny bit for whatever group might be hit, giving them a higher percentage chance of survival along with the knowledge that someone cared enough about them to sacrifice themselves. This would have a high chance of impacting their cultural beliefs and perhaps help them move forward with a new philosophy of helping other people at their own expense rather than simply choosing the greater over the lesser with no self-sacrifice requirement. So whichever person or group is saved would then have a higher likelihood of positively impacting the future, with our sacrifice as a founding pillar. In this scenario I could possibly see the case for switching the train to hit one person and then sacrificing yourself, but I still don’t think a philosophy of “the greater is more important than the lesser” is a good lesson to imbue.

For your version, I’d approach the scenario by asking what is the highest quality of life achievable for the largest number of people you have the power to impact?

Andre Mayer@5: “As a result, while they may confront ethical issues, they are too abstract to address actual decision-making.’

It’s supposed to be the other way around: an ethical thought experiment is supposed to clarify a general principle by creating a concrete situation that makes it clear. I agree that they rarely seem to work as intended– pretty frequently they end up inadvertently introducing side issues. They generally give you the feeling that the ideas under discussion aren’t applicable to the real world, or else you wouldn’t need to contrive bizarre hypotheticals to illustrate them.

A variant that, if memory serves, comes from Bernard Williams.
You have been lost while hiking in the jungle in South America and come upon a clearing with a village. As you come closer, you see a dozen frightened peasants lined up in front of several armed soldiers, led by a Saturday morning western movie cliche dictator. You are captured and brought before him. After a brief interrogation, he is satisfied with your story and lets you go. He explains that the villagers had refused to pay their taxes and had been muttering about revolt and, therefore, he was going to execute a dozen of them to encourage the others. He is in a generous mood, though, and in honor of your escape from the dangers of the jungle he will, in your honor, shoot only one of them — but you have to choose. You can choose any way you like: seek volunteers, draw straws, or whatever, but you must choose. If not, he will have all twelve shot. Either way, you are free to go afterward and will not be harmed.What do you do?

Save the gangster’s victims, as that is time-critical. Organise a charity drive to replace the medical supplies. How is that even a question?

If you want to connect things, connect them, don’t just state they are connected, while setting up a scenario where they are not.

Pulling levers, if you understand what’s going on, can predictably divert trains. Pushing fat men doesn’t. Make the system of switches more complex, with parts hidden inside boxes, and you can gradually lose that understanding, piece by piece, until you know nothing. Having some of the opaque boxes labelled things like ‘imperialism’ or ‘terrorism’ can help, providing you trust the person who wrote the labels.

Mostly, ethical thought experiments are designed to drive a wedge between a student’s professed first principles and their actual position (usually on abortion, occasionally on war or public spending etc.)

As Richard M points out, real-world ethical situations are ones of incomplete knowledge; in that situation, heuristics, tendencies, and approximate solutions are the way forward.

Trolley problems strip away all that uncertainty and unclarity. It’s no surprise that our intuitive everyday understandings don’t work with trolley problems, but it’s precisely that that makes the “insights” gained from trolley problems meaningless for day-to-day real-world moral quandries.

So, yeah. Trolley problems drive a wedge between the situation as described and the moral framework of the students; the bits the wedge splits off are the problems that never arise in the real world. Keys and lampposts spring to mind.

CJ Colluchi@13: the heroic response is to say, sure, I’ll shoot one myself out of pure machismo; take the dictator’s pistol; shoot him.

Opinions may vary as to how far anyone of liberal, non-heroic principles could be expected to do that.

Hypotheticals, especially those with binary choices, are not rooted in reality and therefore offer no actual solutions to problems of war, poverty, injustice, etc.

ISIS, for instance, is real. They are not statesmen, diplomats, negotiators or consensus builders. They even consider Hamas to be “infidels” because Hamas is seeking legitimacy via the United Nations—a decidedly Western invention. They ask, “Why seek solutions from Ban Ki Moon or Antonio Guterres when Allah is the source of truth and power?” Meanwhile their genocidal actions continue. It wasn’t until their murderous action was met with a more substantial force that they began to lose their advantages. Is it morally wrong to fight them off militarily?

President Obama believed that releasing terrorists from Gitmo would mitigate resentment toward the USA and thus deter ISIS’s recruiting abilities. As several journalists have pointed out, members of ISIS were, in fact, praying for the release of the Gitmo prisoners and they viewed the prisoner’s release from Gitmo as Allah answering their prayers. Rather deterring ISIS’s recruiting, it emboldened them by allowing them to claim that Allah was listening to their prayers, thereby legitimizing their quest to establish their Caliphate and getting more fighters in their ranks.

Again, there are many factors that binary hypotheticals do not address.

If we are taking on essentially all-knowingness about consequences, let’s switch to the more venerable problem from Voltaire’s Zadig:
<b<Zadig, tho’ astonish’d to the last Degree, attended him to their last Stage, which was to the Cottage of a very virtuous and well-dispos’d Widow, who had a Nephew of about fourteen Years of Age. He was a hopeful Youth, and the Darling of her Heart. She entertain’d her two Guests with the best Provisions her little House afforded. In the Morning she order’d her Nephew to attend them to an adjacent Bridge, which, having been broken down some few Days before, render’d the Passage dangerous to Strangers.
The Lad, being very attentive to wait on them, went formost. When they were got upon the Bridge; come hither, my pretty Boy, said the Hermit, I must give your Aunt some small Token of my Respect for her last Night’s Favours. Upon that, he twisted his Fingers in the Hair of his Head, and threw him, very calmly, into the River. Down went the little Lad; he came up once again to the Surface of the Water; but was soon lost in the rapid Stream. O thou Monster! thou worst of Villains, cry’d Zadig! Didn’t you promise, said the Hermit, to view my Conduct with Patience? Know then, that had that Boy liv’d but one Year longer, he would have murder’d his Foster–Mother. Who told you so, you barbarous Wretch, said Zadig? And when did you read that inhuman Event in your Black–Book of Fate? Who gave you Permission pray, to drown so innocent a Youth, that had never disoblig’d you?
No sooner had our young Babylonian ceas’d his severe Reflections, but he perceiv’d that the old Hermit’s long Beard grew shorter and shorter; that the Furrows in his Face began to fill up, and that his Cheeks glow’d with a Rose-coloured Red, as if he had been in the Bloom of Fifteen. His Mantle was vanish’d at once; and on his Shoulders, which were before cover’d, appear’d four angelic Wings, each refulgent as the Sun. O thou Messenger of Heaven! O thou angelic Form! cry’d Zadig, and fell prostrate at his Feet; thou art descended from the Empireum, I find, to instruct such a poor frail Mortal as I am, how to submit to the Mysteries of Fate. Mankind in general, said the Angel Jesrad, judge of the Whole, by only viewing the hither Link of the Chain. Zadig, begg’d Leave to speak. I am somewhat diffident of myself, ’tis true; but may I presume, Sir, to beg the Solution of one Scruple? Would it not have been better to have chastiz’d the Lad, and by that Means reform’d him, than to have cut him off thus unprepar’d in a Moment. Jesrad, replied, had he been virtuous, and had he liv’d, ’twas his Fate not only to be murder’d himself, but his Wife, whom he would afterwards have married, and the little Infant, that was to have been the Pledge of their mutual Affection.
So, do you drown the kid?

Can’t resist throwing in, so to speak, another pretty boy;

The other issue with trolley problems is they fail to take into account the power dynamics of being a switch operator. Obviously a venal, cowardly, or selfish person is going to choose the option that has the best outcome for them personally. In this example, perhaps the gangsters can offer a much bigger bribe than the poor villagers, or, perhaps, the switch operator is motivated by the praise and sense of virtue they’ll get if they save the villagers. This is why trolley problems usually assume a perfectly rational and disinterested switch operator. Perfect objectivity is, of course, impossible, but, even if we accept that premise, there’s still an issue.

Let’s assume two things. First, that the switch operator knows that they’re the best switch operator and no one else can do the job as well as they can. Second, let’s assume that the switch operator is employed by a committee that will fire them if they ever disagree with the choice the switch operator makes. Let’s say that the committee will almost always agree with the switch operator about which switch to pull, so avoiding getting fired and replaced by a less competent switch operator is always better than getting fired.

So, one day, our trolley operator sees that that there are ten people on one track and the committee chairman’s son on the other. Ten people die. That’s the problem with being a trolley operator in a democracy.