In the trivial case of breakfast, if you reach noon without eating breakfast, it’s not because you’ve failed to make a decision. It’s because you’ve consciously decided to do other things. There’s no “don’t make a decision” for folks who are aware.
I do agree that it’s not pedantic–but that’s because you don’t “not react.” When you’re aware of a situation, whatever you do is a reaction. If you freeze, that’s your reaction. If you turn away, that’s your reaction. If you help out, that’s your reaction. Falsely classifying some reactions as actions and others as lack of actions lets people off the hook in a way that’s not appropriate.
Fortunately I’m not telling you either of these things; and I’m honestly not even sure what the best answer should be.
I think the response that the scenario is so contrived and ridiculous, we’re going to do everything to avoid this sort of thing happening, have failsafes, train people, that the scenario of an untrained person being asked to make this sort of decision, we don’t care because it’s not our top priority. The trolley problem occurring at all is a bigger deal than what action a person takes.
The Trolley Problem is relevant to every decision we have to make at the last second to between undesirable outcomes. We can choose not to act, or fail to act sometimes, or act in the manner that is least detrimental to some or all. Most real life situations provide an easy choice, or one that doesn’t matter much.
There are real life situations where brakes on cars and trucks fail, where a pedestrian steps into traffic, where you have to choose between the desires of a spouse, parent, and/or child. Sometimes a business has to cut staff and some will be greatly affected by the loss of their job. In real life we have to decide whether to buy one house or the other, or one car or the other and the choice could have a major financial or other impact on our lives. The most difficult choices we are likely to face involve accepting great benefit or detriment to ourselves or putting it on others. Our decisions in life should be preparation for the worst of circumstances that could include Trolley Problem level choices to make. Even then, in the worst cases where there is no time left any of us might not be able to choose quickly enough to act.
So that’s at very good ethical argument. No dispute from me (I mean I might disagree somewhat about the workers on the tracks, but in broad strokes I’d agree). And its the product of someone posing the trolley problem. So yeah that’s the use of the trolley problem. As shown by what you just wrote it’s a useful thought experiment to get people to think about ethics. Its not something we should be teach trolley car operators and it’s not the be all and end all of the study of ethics. But its a perfectly good thought experiment.
Unless you know that without fail your husband makes you waffles at 8am sharp unless you tell him you want something else. Then by doing nothing you are 100% choosing waffles.
Though that is not at all the reason most people would consider blowing up a bus full of solders more ethical than bus full of hospital patients. It has nothing to with agency or understanding the risks. Most people would still consider it ethical if it was Iraqi conscripts who have no agency at all, or if it soldiers involved had been convinced by their supervisors that the enemy was defeated and there was no risk of attack. The reason most people would consider it a more ethical act is because they are combatants in a war and as a society we have a different set of ethical codes during wartime.
All of which we are considering because of the trolley problem You are effectively suggesting an alternate problem where it’s a cruise missile instead of a trolley and there are a bus full of hospital patients in option A and soldiers in option B. In that one most people say “yes I’d pull the level controlling the cruise missile, so that it hits the soldiers”, which says something about our ethical systems.
Would you prefer a more abstract question, like “How would you decide between taking an action that would result in the death of one innocent person, and not taking that action, which would result in the deaths of multiple other innocent people?”
Or even more generally: Would/could/should you decide to take an action that would lead to harm if not taking that action would lead to objectively greater harm—and you don’t have time to think it over or gather more information?
The basic trolley problem, it seems to me, takes that general question and puts it into a simple narrative context. Are your answers to the abstract question and to the trolley problem the same? If not, why not?
Human beings respond differently to abstract questions than to the “same” questions placed within a human context. Consider, for example, the different formulations of the Wason selection task (testing a rule like “If a card has an even number on one side, it must be blue on the other side” vs. a rule like “If a person is drinking alcohol, they must be over age”).
No. Because I am not convinced human morality is conducive to simple abstraction. When the topic is morality, I prefer less abstraction, not more. The less divorced from reality, the better. Human morality does not exist on an ideal plain, it exists in nature.
Seems unlikely since we aren’t calling it The Happy Trolley Story. People do make decisions in real life, thus it is relevant to any decision made. If you don’t care about it’s relevance for some reason or another is a different matter.
You’re on a trolley, throwing cash to those you pass by. On your current track, you’ll pass by ten orphans. But you see that if you quickly switch tracks, you’ll pass by fifty orphans. Do you switch?
The whole disagreement many have is that there’s no “objectively” about it.
Me, I don’t care about that aspect - my own solution to the problem is to toss a coin - but I can see what those people mean, in the “save 5 future Hitlers by killing one future Salk” sense.
A serial killer has kidnapped five Dopers. He presents them with the trolley problem, and tells them that if they can all answer the dilemma as presented, they all go free, but if even one of them argues the hypothetical, he will kill them all. Question: should each Doper get their own In Memorium thread, or would it be acceptable to do one thread for all five?
The goal of the trolley problem is to explore the ethical dilemma of choosing between two harmful outcomes, typically sacrificing one life to save many, thereby examining utilitarian principles and moral responsibility. It’s not about finding ways to change the scenario or outcome.
Einstein’s “riding a light beam” thought experiment aimed to explore the nature of light and the implications of Maxwell’s equations on time and space, leading to the theory of special relativity. It questioned how light would appear to someone traveling at light speed, highlighting inconsistencies in classical physics. It wasn’t about arguing the impossibility of traveling at light speed or anything else.
Fighting the hypothetical may be fun and clever, but it doesn’t really tell us much of interest.
I’m not sure why you think it’s not relevant to any real world issues. Particularly in jobs that deal with life and death. Think of a fire chief trying to decide to send a team into a burning building to rescue someone. It’s not as absolute as the trolley problem as there are degrees of risk (no pun intended). How definite is it that someone is still inside? How far along is the fire and how likely is the building to collapse with everyone inside?
