Comment by ashkankiani
2 days ago
When I read people talking online, it seems as if philosophy has been solved and we all just agree that utilitarian is the way to go? Is the trolley problem solved? So long as people on average are better off (not that I'm conceding they will be, you can't use the past to predict the future), it's fine to go ahead with the technology?
Are these things actually complicated, or is it the case that simplicity feels bad somehow?
The trolley problem is just messy emotionally, not actually complicated. You only have two choices, you pick the one that saves the most lives and that’s the best you can do.
You raise a good point: It is important to separate the logical and emotional concerns. I think the previous poster is concerned that the emotional side receives so little attention on these forums.
Weirdly, this has parallels with soldiers in military conflicts. For generations, we only focused on their physical health. Today's modern militaries are much more concerned about the mental health of their soldiers during and after combat.
The problem of the trolly problem is not about "best outcome" it is about ethics of action and inaction when weighed against lives
Let's put it this way. Consider a trolly problem where there are two tracks and one person on each track . There's a trolly coming to hit one person. Is it ethical to change the track so it kills the other person instead?
In this case you're only weighing one life against one life. So clearly it's never ethical to pull that lever right?
Now make it two people on the trolly track. Saving two lives instead of one. Is it now ethical to pull the lever just because there is one extra person there? If not, then how many people would it have to be before it would be ethical?
Idk. The trolley problem is anything but simple in my mind
In these scenarios you’re morally obligated to save the most people. I don’t see why this is complicated at all.
Maybe other people put a lot of emotional weight on the choice itself but as long as I tried to save the most people I’d sleep soundly at night.
Minus the horror of watching people get run over by a trolley of course.
You’re on a site created by a startup accelerator for people in the startup world, you’re going to get overwhelmingly utilitarian capitalist views.
Not to troll here, but if we asked taxi drivers across the world, few will probably have "utilitarian capitalist views". People in tech have those views because they align with their economic incentives.