I just played this as a board game with my friends. They decided that pineapple on pizza is worse than Donald Trump. My hope in humanity is shattered.
Also a spin-off where Trolley Man cures incurable patients one by one using sacrifices of 5
yes, if you change the problem, you change the way we respond. that’s why there’s so many trolley problems spin offs in the first place
but the end result is the same.
you’re always left with five.
The artist just immortalized in a strip that does not understand the trolley problem.
Entire thing is analysis paralysis. There always some information that will change desired outcome.
Don’t bother trying to explain philosophy directly to people online. We’re so convinced of our own intelligence that we refuse to consider that our knee-jerk reaction to anything might be worth exploring.
If you want people to learn anything, you have to first of all tell them that they’re right, then add whatever you’re trying to teach them as if it’s some nuance of whatever they’re right about. Even if it makes their original opinion completely wrong. It works surprisingly often.
Our egos have an outer layer of armor that prevents us from easily absorbing ideas unless they have a starting point of agreeing with whatever we already believe.
True for most sadly. But not for all.
I’m happy to be proven wrong. It means I learned something that day. And I love learning new things.
It understands it just fine. Agency is not a factor in the decision. The choice between action and inaction doesn’t matter. People think it matters because people are driven by shortsighted emotions.
I think the thing that people often don’t seem to understand about the trolley problem is that it doesn’t have a “single version”, it’s a framework for exploring human decision making. And the correct answer, it’s all a matter of perspective. For example, if all of drag’s friends were on one side of the track, and on the other side of the track, were a number of people who drag does not know, equal to the number of drag’s friends plus one, would drag kill their friends, or the innocent people?
Drag’s friends. Drag has at least ten friends probably, and drag’s friends are at least 10% better than the average rando. They’re mostly communists and queers. The world is better off with them in it than with some random people who are probably capitalists.
Thank you so much for being honest about making that choice - almost everyone would choose their friends, but lots of people wouldn’t admit to that. Being honest myself, I’d make the same call - and if it came down to me picking between my friends and drag’s friends, I’d choose my friends. The whole “calculus” we run (comparing how good our friends are to average people) is a way we justify making our decisions, a way to deal with the cognitive dissonance of our values (save as many lives as possible) being in conflict with what we actually do (saving our friends rather than as many lives as possible). In reality you would have no way of knowing who those other 11 people would be - for example, if I said that one of them is a researcher on the brink of curing cancer, how would that change your decision? These are really tough questions to deal with, and that’s the point of the trolley problem - that people make different choices because they have different perspectives, and different values. There’s no objectively right and objectively wrong answer to any of the scenarios. Just different interpretations and ways to think about it.
Drag chooses to kill those people because drag knows nothing about them. Drag just assume they’re randos. And on average, people suck. Drag’s friends are great people.
If drag knew more about the people, the equation would change. Drag finds it difficult to reason seriously about a scientist discovering a cure for cancer, since there’s no such thing. There are hundreds of cancers. There’s no one solution for all of them and there never will be. We’ll need hundreds of cures for cancer, many of which we already use today.
If we went with a more realistic scenario, like “one of those people will be the leader of the USA’s communist revolution”, drag would be much more willing to kill drag’s friends. Drag might also commit suicide about it, though, so maybe the numbers aspect is equal anyway. Would drag give drag’s life and all drag’s friends’ lives away for a communist America? Probably, but drag would sure like some assurance it’s going to be proper anarchist communism, and drag wants to know if another leader could have taken that place. Does drag even believe in the “great man” approach to history, or is there no such thing as such a leader? Is there nobody that important?
That’s perfect, drag, I don’t think anyone could have put it better. The trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment, yet so many people approach it like it’s some sort of engineering problem that has right and wrong answers, I think it’s probably a consequence of our sort of “tech bro” culture that everything needs to fit into this rational, quantitative framework - we have this drive to put numbers on things that just can’t be rationalised in that way.
People are funny, complicated things, and I love them all!
So philosophical debate on this topic is meaningless, because utilitarism is obviously correct?
Please take off your clothes and lay down here, I have five patients in desperate need of organ transplants.
Please see the other comment drag wrote in this thread in reply to the earlier comment replying to drag, which drag wrote before seeing yours.
I, as the doctor, didn’t pick you. Your organs happen to be compatible with all five recipients. It’s still random chance, you’re just unlucky because your organs work best.
So, we gonna chop you up, or not?
What a crock of shit. Living with the knowledge that you killed someone isn’t shortsighted, it’s tragic. You pulling the trigger to switch the trolley to kill only the 1 person can and will have consequences on your own mental health.
And the comic isn’t even about the choice between action and inaction, it’s about “Oh wow, 5>1, this dilemma is easy lol” - nah, even if you make it purely about the numbers - unless you’re a fucking psychopath, you’re not gonna kill your newborn to save 5 strangers.
Living with knowing you did nothing to save 4 people may affect you as badly. To be fair, the person doing the choice is fucked up both ways, if ey is not a sociopath.
You pulling the trigger to switch the trolley to kill only the 1 person can and will have consequences on your own mental health.
That’s called selfishness, and it’s not generally considered a factor in ethics. At most, that changes the equation to 2 vs 5. Still easy.
unless you’re a fucking psychopath, you’re not gonna kill your newborn to save 5 strangers.
Then psychopaths are right and neurotypical people are wrong. The world would be better off if it had more psychopaths, as you describe them.
But you’re wrong about psychopaths. See, what you’re describing is limited empathy. You have more empathy for your baby than for five strangers, because of your limited point of view and inability to abstract the situation and see the bigger picture. A psychopath, according to pop psychology (psychopathy doesn’t actually exist in serious psychology, but let’s pretend it does) has no empathy. A psychopath doesn’t care who dies. They probably save the baby because it’s more socially acceptable and will make them look good. That’s selfishness again.
If you want to know who saves the strangers, well that’s someone who has empathy for both the baby and the strangers, and the wisdom to empathise equally with both. That kind of wisdom is extremely rare because natural selection doesn’t favour it. It doesn’t offer any advantage over the rest of the species to be that selfless. So you’d be most likely to find it in an extremely rare combination of autistic traits, or in a very enlightened Buddhist monk.
Agency might matter depending on societal context. 5 hot guys might be worse than 1 hot guy in a world with limited resources, for example.
Everyone knows that 5 of something is usually better than 1. The dilemma comes from finding a situation where that might not be true, and therein exploring some quirks of our own humanity.
It goes too far when people interpret these quirks as fundamental human traits, but there is genuine merit in testing oneself with fun hypotheticals
testing oneself with fun hypotheticals
fun
you’ve got a peculiar taste for fun, I must admit
edit
to be fair, I don’t disagree, and discussing things like that or pondering them can be fun, but I still wouldn’t expect such a choice of words 😅
Trolley problems can be directly mapped to those “would you rather” drinking games. e.g. Would you have sex with your dad to save your mum’s life?
The question is meaningless in a normal context, the answer is meaningless in a normal context, but it’s fun to explore your limits in strange circumstances, no?
That’s true, there’s even a party game that consists solely of controversial topics to talk about, not even this kind of weird ones
That’s not a matter of agency, that’s still a matter of the goodness of the action. You constructed a version where more of the magic hot guys is bad, and made the valence negative again. So now one is better, and agency still isn’t a factor.
What’s actually interesting is the doctor version. Kill one healthy person and harvest their organs to save five people from death? That, at first glance, puts agency back in the equation. But drag still thinks the key isn’t agency. It’s power. In the trolley version, you have no power over who’s on the other track. You didn’t choose that person in particular to die, they just happened to be in the way. In the doctor version, either you or the boss chose a healthy person to die. You got to pick. You cannot take responsibility for picking. And you cannot support a system in which another person picks either. But when random chance picks who has to die, that’s fine. There’s no abuse of power in that one. Killing who you need to kill in order to save others isn’t abusive power. Picking who dies, when you could have picked someone else, that’s abuse.
deleted by creator
Classic Kahneman/Tversky here
I would read the shit out of this but 5 people I have never and will never meet who nobody knows will die painlessly and I’m just not sure of the moral implications.
The best part is that, by refusing to be killed themselves, they are making a choice to let the other people die, rendering their hypocrisy evident and their worry fully rendered moot
Yeah, but what if it was a ship full of assholes? I got shopping to do.
Can Trolley Man at least multi-track drift?
I keep seeing this image, were ist from?
Initial D parody.
While you are at that… https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=j0QSrhGw4cU
Issue #1 or 5? You decide!
This got a bonus chuckle from me.
Ugh, this guy’s gonna be a problem.
Like a whole thing 😫
Still saves more lives than Homelander
Isn’t Homelander a villain though? I thought he was supposed to be a villain.
Edit: NM I didn’t realize Homelander was from The Boys. I honestly thought he was the guy in Guardians of The Galaxy 3
Edit 2: Apparently that character’s name is Adam Warlock.
The multiple layers of confusion gave me a laugh, thank you.
I remember reading The Infinity gauntlet comics and in it Adam warlock was supposed to be the greatest human being ever created.
And then they picked the actor that they chose for him and I’m just not seeing it.
You don’t like eyebrows?
Spoiler
Homelander is the villain in the boys.
Anyone who drinks milk on-screen is always a villain.
Let’s see, Milk is a symbol of innocence and purity in movies, and is often used to make the audience feel uncomfortable when a villain or anti-hero drinks it.
This is because milk is typically associated with childhood, which is considered the most innocent and pure time of life.
When a villain drinks milk, it can represent the consumption or destruction of innocence, and can be used to indicate the villain’s loss of innocence
I kinda think it’s more to create contrast than to signify eating innocence
Counterargument: Luke Skywalker.
At that point isn’t he? He created Kylo and then left everyone else to figure it out.
Not really a hero’s move
True hero’s move, really, retire and let others become heroes (half /s)
Yeah but blue milk tho. Might as well be cheese at that point
Myself? I’d prefer bacta. You NEVER say no to bacta
Ahh, kk. Never seen it, but I guess the two characters seem similar in that respect at least.
Hiding that piece of info behind a spoiler tag chef’s kiss.
It’s close to the second ghost rider (and maybe the first, been awhile since I dug up my old comics) who didn’t have powers until innocent blood was spilled (though typically it was the villain who spilled it).
The Dave Chappelle bit about Bill Cosby being a superhero… but he rapes.
I want more of this. Reminds me on the anime Darker than Black, where those with power always had to fulfill some contract to use their power, else they’d die.
Man, this anime is so underrated. I like it a lot. I question the artistic direction on the second season, but at least the ending wrapped up the whole show nicely.
A little correction, nobody really know what happens when a contractor doesn’t do that side-effect thingy. It is never mentioned if they would die, nor that it’s even implied. The way I see it, they’d simply develop strong impulse to do so.
There is no sinking ship. Fake news!
So he killed Stan Lee?
And here was I thinking that this character was so terrible that it caused Stan Lee to spontaneously spring back into existence in order to make that opinion known.
How democrats unironically viewed the election.
I don’t get it.
Libs on this platform are obsessed with the trolley problem. They referred to it a lot to prove that genocide is ok and it being a deal breaker is stupid.
USA voters in the recent election never had a choice between genocide and not genocide, though, so your rambling seems pretty delusional.
Democrats : we have a complicated diplomatic relationship with this foreign state that is exacerbated by our domestic politics. We want this war to end, way more aid to flow into gaza, and a real, two state solution with a change of leadership in both nations so Palestine can co-exist with Israel.
MAGA : PALESTINE DOES NOT EXIST AND NEVER WILL, WE WILL SEND A FLOOD OF UNLIMITED WEAPONS ON DAY 1, THE WEST BANK DOES NOT HAVE ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS, JUST NORMAL COMMUNITIES. OUR AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL IS A FUNDAMENTALIST CRISTIAN WHO WANTS ARMAGEDDON AND OUR SECRETARY OF STATE HAS CALLED FOR TOTAL WAR.
You:
These are the same people.
Yall are absolute clown cars, and have sentenced the palestinian people to even more mass death with your empty, vacant posturing. Its fully possible there will be no west bank or gaza after these 4 years end, partly due to your actions. Great job.
You must have misclicked, I am saying Democrats were a clear choice, that the concept that a voter could morally abstain from voting for them because of Gaza is pure fallacy.
There is no trolley problem normalizing Genocide relating to Democrats in the USA election, because genocide was always normalized and never on the ballot.
In fact, the trolley problems that user is referring to likely pointed exactly that out and they still don’t understand it, an absolute concavebrain whoosh scenario.
This guy pulled the lever and is mad that it was rusted in place.
I mean, I did too. But I knew it was rusted first. Had to try anyways.
I just know that the people at fault are both the assholes who cut the repair and replacement budget and the guys who tied the people to the tracks, and not some randoms who aren’t even in the same country.
that’s rich.
the only idiots who willingly misattribute this thought experiment are conservative trolls and Leftists, in my experience.
honestly I think Democrats are the only ones who can fully grasp the concept of the trolley problem since both conservatives and leftists are much too extreme to make a non-biased choice. That can only be true because Democrats ride the fence between the two so well(according to both conservatives anf leftists).
but hey, I’m just some retard on the internet according to them as well. 🤷
Extreme leftism is when you have a bedrock principle or two that you refuse to compromise on. Centrism is when everything, even genocide, is negotiable.
really great how you made a net negative sound like a positive, when in reality Leftists are just hyper focused on a facet of a larger problem and completely ignore the bigger picture because it doesn’t make them feel warm and fuzzy.
that’s fine. Genocide is acceptable by Leftists too if it’s Muslims.
btw, where was the leftist outrage for the millions of Wygers in China? not brown enough? not convenient enough during an election?
so what makes lefties IGNORE Wyger persecution in china?
Leave aside for a moment the argument we might have about what is happening in China… What the fuck would I be able to do about that? Do I vote in China? Do my tax dollars fund their military?
And american voters also didn’t get to do anything about the palestinian genocide because there were two choices and pretending there were more is delusional at best. And the choice was between a party unwilling to take a strong stance against it vs a party actively encouraging it and saying they’d help. While also openly wanting to genocide minority groups in their own country.
Well, there is a third choice. It’s the centrist choice of either not voting or voting for an irrelevant party, equivalent to saying “let the others decide”.
Leave aside for a moment the argument we might have about what is happening in China… What the fuck would I be able to do about that? Do I vote in China? Do my tax dollars fund their military?
so it’s based entirely on convenience. that’s even worse than being a racist.
your economic dollars do. the entire American economy is dependent on cheap Wyger labor.
how about pushing political leadership to apply pressure on China to stop enslaving Wygers? How about stop buying anything from China?
Your money, not tax money, but YOUR money enables China to continue to enslave Wygers.
when you go to the store, how about you look at where all your shit is made. I bet the technology you’re using to spray your liquid shititlement everywhere online is even made by Wygers in China.
Can’t lefties get their messaging straight? You guys are the “anti-establishment” crowd. the most organized anarchists! The best corpopinkos in the world!
I’ll just keep calling them hypocrites though.
You have to keep the focus on China otherwise you have to face the indefensible American support of genocide. You ask me to seek influence over my own government who already rattles the saber at China, yet I can’t even influence their very direct funding of Israel’s genocide! Tell me how you imagine that would be done? Tell me how I might apply pressure on China in 1/1000 the amount I might apply on my own government.
Um… Do you mean Uyghurs? Because maybe you shouldn’t get so upset about others not caring about that genocide when you aren’t even aware of what the people being genocided are called.
Ah, yes, centrists. The only ones able to think.
Ah, yea, extremists. The only ones who “have all the answers”.
Ah yes, z axists, the only ones able to “rise above” the issue
