@mwl

This is exactly how I feel about the Trolley Problem.

It is a completely unrealistic propaganda device for a kind of utilitarian philosophy. One with terrible consequences we see all around us today.

The fact that it comes from and is especially popular in the English-speaking world (and has slowly spread to the rest of the world via memes in the recent years) also denounces its lack of universality. It is not a fundamental moral dilemma. It is exactly what this story describes.

@hisham_hm @mwl People really take the wrong thing away from the trolley problem. It isn’t directly about what you personally would or should do. Instead, it’s like an axis of comparison for ethical frameworks. It’s one of the extremes where differences (and sometimes similarities) between them become more apparent.

Like how Schrödinger’s cat isn’t saying the cat is both alive and dead, it’s taking a model we have for quantum effects and showing how, when taken to extremes, it produces results which are patently absurd.

@bob_zim @hisham_hm @mwl Honesty, the only real ethical question I can see at the heart of the trolley problem is "Is inaction as morally culpable as action".

Because the choice is simply:
* Do nothing and five people die.
* Do something and directly cause the death of one person.

If your inaction makes you just as responsible for the death of the five, then clearly the moral choice is to throw the switch.

But if not acting means I'm not responsible, then I'm only a murderer if I throw the switch.

@StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl And my point is that nowhere in real life this question would come up so devoid of further context.

For example, if a self-driving car reaches a point where it needs to choose between continuing straight and hitting five people or steering to the side and hitting one, that is not "an instance of the trolley problem": the true question at hand involves every ethical decision that led to that scenario becoming a possibility in the first place.

@hisham_hm @StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl Nowhere in real life?

Was the worst of Covid so long ago that you have forgotten the people who asserted their "right" not to wear a masked trumped the "right" of others, incl especially vulnerable others, not to be infected?

Here, currently, there are routine adverts encouraging people who feel ill (w flu etc) to stay home to avoid spreading infections.

Not exactly throwing a switch but decisions w moral & potential life & death consequences.

@samueljohnson @StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl Of course, moral decisions involving life and death exist. Again, and that's my whole point, they are not devoid of context. The trolley problem is not a useful device for thinking about them.

If we want to effectively deal with the question of the harm made by people who don't wear masks in a pandemic, abstracting the situation into a "choice between a lesser harm by action or a greater harm by inaction" is absolutely not the way to do it.

@hisham_hm @StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl I think the trolley metaphor is easily understood and fairly widely applicable.

Retrench employment vs close a plant entirely eg

In this case no explicit death sentence, but Boris Johnson's govt was, at one point during Covid pandemic, happy to consider, pretty explicitly (in private), sacrifice of pensioners to "keep the economy open".

Objecting to *false* choices is fine but sometimes choices do have to be made.

See Churchill on Enigma code work eg.

@samueljohnson @StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl Choices do have to be made, but in every real world context there is more nuance than a binary choice.

Applying the trolley problem mindset to any of those scenarios you described is problematic because: (A) none of these choices are purely binary, there are more alternatives and nuance; (B) the different choices are not harms of the same nature that differ only in quantity.

It is a cop-out to justify a harmful decision through false dichotomy.

@samueljohnson @StryderNotavi @bob_zim @mwl ...and of course (C) the trolley problem mindset brushes away the series of decisions that led to the scenario where one has to choose between two bad outcomes in the first place. Politicians in particular love this feature.

In short, saying "look, it's the lesser evil! Kind of like in the trolley problem!" is effectively a thought-terminating cliché.