If you pull the lever, the trolly will derail due to the sharp turn. If the trolly tips over, it will probably still slide over the five people and the chance that it will also catch that one person on the rails is quite high. Then you have six victims instead of five. Pushing that fat person off the bridge is also not an option because there is no guarantee that the trolly will stop in time before it reaches the people on the rails. If you were sure that the trolly would slow down a lot in that case, the best option you have is to first push the fat one off the bridge and then pull the lever. The trolly might derail, but it would have lost so much momentum that it would not move any further and would no longer hit the people on the rails. But of course a real hero jumps in front of the train himself. dilemmas, dilemmas.
I like the one where you can’t do anything to stop the trolley from running over an endless line of people, but you can change the color of the trolley, which is nice
My favourite trolly problems meme is the the “Hedonist’s Trolley Problem”. The trolley can hit five and it does a “sick loop-da-loop” OR it hits one but you don’t get to see it do the loop-da-loop.
My favorite one is where the trolley is running over an infinite number of people and the prompt says "you can stop the trolley at any time, but would that really be fair to all the people it already killed?"
"where you stop making loss is profit" is a turkish idiom which is kinda self explenatory which means if you are making a loss, or bad things are happening and the moment you do something to stop it, you are actually kind of profiting or did a good thing since you have avoided further loss/bad things. There is also the fact that equity doesn't mean equality. In the considiration of these, stopping the trolley is the only moral thing to do. Because you can not ressurect someone who is dead, they are irreversibly gone. In anohter aspects to this. it is undair to say that other should die too because there are people who already died. Why should alive people suffer becuase some other people died? it is not fait to say people should suffer because some did. thanks for coming to my ted talk
If you pull the lever, you killed a countably infinite number of people. If you pull it a finite amount of time later, you killed a countably infinite number of people. Both outcomes are exactly the same. Don't believe me? Give everyone a unique number representing the order they were killed (0 being the current position of the trolley, negative numbers being people killed in the past and positive numbers are people yet to be killed). In the first situation, you killed -1, -2, -3, ... In the second situation, you killed 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... But there is a bijection between the two sets f(x) = x - 5 therefore both sets are exactly the same size.
I like the one that goes "You can stop the trolley at anytime, saving everyone, but doing so means that, as you untie them, you would have to engage in some brief small talk"
"You can stop the trolly at any time, but you will no longer be able to use the threat of the trolly hitting the people to garner the votes of the people on the tracks"
My favorite one is the “moral Philosophers Trolley problem” There is actually nobody tied to the track, but you are a moral philosopher. Would you tie people to the tracks to save your job?
The brain-in-a-vat situation is a bit more complicated as the brain is drawn as not being on the rail, which could imply the individual contained in the brain might survive the experience. So the question there, in text form, could be: "would you rather permanently kill someone or make someone live with the trauma of experiencing being killed?"
@@Syuvinya but the imaginary friends would be erased by killing the brain, they wouldn't experience any trauma. The friends of the person not in a vat would have to live without the person.
My favorite trolley problem is the one where you can pull the lever to divert the trolley onto a track with no people, and everyone is saved, but you'd be hailed as a hero and a bunch of people would want to shake your hand and congratulate you, and the media would want interviews, and it's just so much social interaction you just don't have the spoons for.
Aside from the "a fat man on the bridge" situation, there is a technical (but not moral) solution to this class of problems. A Japanese engineer created a miniature railroad model based on the conditions in the original problem and conducted experiments. He discovered that if he pulled the lever right after the front wheels of the trolly went in one direction but before the hind wheels went there, the trolly got off the track and stopped before it hit anyone. He repeated it multiple times and everytime he successfully stopped the trolly. 😆
What I like about the trolley problem is the fact that no matter what I ultimately think the more moral action is, I still have no idea how I'd respond if put in that situation.
There was actually a real-life experiment done by Vsauce (with a mere visual simulation of people working on the track using monitors, and the unsuspecting participants being mentally cared for immediately afterwards, of course). The real-life solution was that most people would just freeze out of fear of responsibility and do nothing.
I like the one that goes "You finally found and killed him, the person who was tying all these people to the tracks in the first place." "So you killed one person in order to save more people from death?"
For Problem 1: At 4:15. Instead of asking who you'd rather be friends with, you could also ask if you'd rather live in a society where people just happen to act optimally in a utilitarian sense without any internal moral compass. While you might not like them, your life - and everyone else's - might still be objectively better. I feel that question is a lot harder to answer.
My favorite meme variant of the trolley problem is as follows: Sisyphus is pushing a boulder along the track to Hilbert's Grand Hotel; as it contains an infinite number of guests, they might not be able to accommodate Sisyphus or his boulder; you have the option to divert Sisyphus onto another track, at the end of which is the Ship of Theseus, which would be destroyed by the boulder. Is Sisyphus happy?
Dont divert and he will be happy, Hilberts hotel will have enough room. Just ask everyone in room n to move to room n+1 (so the person in room 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 3, and so on), then Sisyphus and Co. gets room 1.
I saw it as Sisyphus is rolling a boulder towards Monty Hall, who has 4 doors. The first is the grand hotel with infinite guests. The second is the ship of theseus. The third is Schrodinger's Cat, and sisyphus' boulder would destroy the box, causing the cat to be observed. The fourth is another Sisyphus going through the monty hall problem, and the boulder would put that Sisyphus out of his misery, though forcing the old one to do a second problem. Is Sisyphus happy?
For the loop problem I'd leave... I'm the only one staying alive in this situation so I REALLY should avoid traumatising myself by seeing six people being brutaly run over by a trolley.
I think CosmicSceptic is wrong in his assessment of the 5th problem. You should totally pull the lever and kill one person first. Mental suffering from seen someone die is far less "bad" in comparison to actually dying. Everybody dies and question is how soon. If you can postpone 5 minds from stopping existing rather than one you should certainly do it. If still not convinced imagine we start modifying conditions. From the picture we could assume that death of one group will follow after another in 5-15 seconds. What if the loop was 3 hours long? 1 day? Month? Year? That is why I think rational thing to do is to pull the lever - you can not predict the future and so maybe this 5 people will somehow survive.
@@MrMpakobec Damn making them suffer knowing their inevitable fate. They are tied up you would be forcing 5 people to be tortured for longer. As opposed to letting one person go through that torture.
@@tommysalami420 For me bad existing is almost infinitely better than nice nothingness (unless all you feel pain so intensive that world around you stop existing). The fact that 5 people will see death of one is nothing compare to their own death and they have some time to do things. They can say something or communicate in other way. If there were no meaningful time delay between deaths of the groups there would be no choice you could make and no trolley problem.
I think the problem with "the trolley problem" is that some other evil force tied up all 6 people, dehumanizing and discussing what to do with their lives, when in reality, that 3rd party mysterious person has all the blame when the problem starts, and if you pull the lever, you still probably dont have the blame, in the end game, pushing the fat person, that, you are pushing a free person, into a situation, that you would be guilty of
My favorite is the hedonist's trolley problem. "You can pull the lever to redirect the trolley and save five people, but you won't get to see the trolley do the totally sick loop-de-loop"
I think the reason people are more hesitant to push the fatman is rather obvious. He's not already tied to the tracks. He's not truly involved in the trolley problem unless you push him onto the tracks. In the lever example, for whatever reason, the lone guy is already there and part of the trolley problem.
This variant is dumb in many ways like a lot said the fat guy cannot be fat enough to stop the trolley but in a world where it was possible pushing him is the way he is not an innocent bystander cause he's watching at that point there's two solution he want to help or not if he help he's a hero and I will tell his tale but if he don't he's the meany and it's clearly the best thing to do to push him I mean the attached people are the true victim of this story Him by seeing the thing is involved as much as you he has probably traumatized to have to make a choice and that's why he didn't already jump maybe he's trying and need help and ofc if I'm the fattiest one I'll jump Imagine your last conversation with someone is about your weight to know what is the most moral thing to do (the fattiest will have more chance of stopping the trolley) Gracefully no fat people will ever be armed in this way cause everyone know it is not possible in our reality to stop a trolley like that ^^
I completely agree. Like he offered a critique of utilitarianism, but then took as purely utilitarian approach to the fat man scenario. The fat man is a bystander who you are involving and then killing. The person tied to the track is already somehow involved.
I find it straightforward to phrase it as: I'm OK with living in a world where being tied to tracks means you might be run over; I'm not OK with a world where standing on a bridge means you might be pushed off it in front of a trolley.
@@Pyedr I agree with you but we live in a world where nobody can stop a train if it's a proposed solution to stop the train it's not a problem of our world and we have to think outside of our view in that world idk if I was in that world I'd jump myself no need to be pushed ^^ I'd be fat for that reason ahah
You are driving a trolley blindfolded and can't stop, but can switch tracks. Though you don't know the remainder of the dilemma, on one track is a ship where each of its original pieces has been replaced, and on the other is a ship made from the original pieces. One of the ships belongs to Theseus, who will be mad if you destroy his ship. He stands off to the side and controls another trolley which is coming down in the opposite direction. He plans to use that trolley as a kamikaze if you anger him, which you will not survive. Therefore, until observed and a conclusion to Theseus's ship problem can be made, Theseus's ship is a form of Schrodinger's cat, being in a state of will and won't be destroyed simultaneously. There is however, a third track, though once you decide which track to take, you learn the third one would simply run off a cliff and guarantee your death, yet you can still choose to switch to another track. If you switch though and Theseus does too, then that lets on a third trolley full of innocents that wind up on the third track, killing them all. Though Theseus does not know about the third trolley, two sisters on the third trolley can read his mind and knows that Theseus will ultimately do the opposite of whatever either of them predicts, except one always tells the truth and the other always lies. Given an infinite amount of time to decide, can you determine what answer one of the sisters thinks you should do if you could ask one of them a single question? This is Schrodinger's and Theseus's three-door two-guard cat ship trolley prisoner halting problem.
The "you don't know the remainder of the dilemma" part kinda prevents acting. Without that though, you should ask the sister what her sister would say Theseus would do if we switched (main) tracks. If she answers "he will not switch", that means either she lies and her sister predicts he would, or, she speaks the truth and her sister would lie knowing that he would. Therefore the other track must contain Theseus, and we should stay our course to hit an empty ship. If however she answers "he will switch", then by the same logic, this track must contain Theseus and so we should switch to the other track. Since Theseus would do the opposite of the prediction, he will not switch, therefore we again just hit the empty ship and nobody dies. ...I think?
The problem I have with the fatman variation of the problem is threefold: A) Nobody is sufficiently fat enough to stop a multi-ton vehicle in/on its tracks. B) If someone were sufficiently fat, there would be nobody who could actually push them effectively. C) If two people, one sufficiently fat and one sufficiently strong to push someone that heavy exist, then that second person should be able to just stop the trolley themselves.
I saw a similar problem in the fatman variation. The fat man wouldn't do anything to stop the trolley at all if it's able to kill those 5 people all lined up together. The fat man would get absolutely destroyed, followed by the 5 people on the track, meaning the fat man's sacrifice was in vein and now 6 innocent lives have been lost.
@@Niko_lai-78I can’t tell of you’re being serious so I’ll just explain anyway: The fatman would 100% stop the train- because that’s how the problem is set up. of course in real life a fat man would not stop the trolley, it’s just a mechanism of explaining the moral question. If you’re going to take the problem at such ridiculous face value, you might as well say pulling the lever wouldn’t do anything because it’s not even hooked up to the train tracks.
My personal favorite version of this meme is one called the "Prisoner's Trolley Problemma" (picture three parallel tracks) A trolley full of your loved ones is heading down the tracks and will hit another loved one. If you redirect it, it will hit three strangers, but all of your loved ones will be fine. However, there is another person on the other side of the tracks facing the same problem. If you both choose to redirect the trolleys, they will crash in the middle, killing almost everyone.
reminds me of the dark knight. two boats full of people have been loaded with bombs primed to blow. the detonator for the bombs is with the people on the other boat. One boat is full of innocents and the other convicted criminals.
I would pull the lever. I don't understand anyone who wouldn't. What's the point of having loved ones if you wouldn't risk everything to protect them? You're always gambling on other people's intentions just by existing. There is no excuse not to take an active role in the well-being of the people close to you.
@@dairoleon2682 The thing is that there's not only one of your loved ones on the track you're going down, there are multiple of your loved ones ON THE TROLLEY. So if both sides choose to redirect it to hit the strangers, both sides are losing their loved ones AND the strangers. That's the thing about the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's a complicated test of social cooperation. The choice with the least casualties to loved ones would be if one side chooses to hit their one loved one and the other side chooses to hit the strangers. But neither side is going to WANT to be the one that hits their one loved one... but both sides choosing to divert means even MORE loss to loved ones. So it's a game of "Who's gonna take a smaller sacrifice so that neither of us has to take a bigger sacrifice?" except with no communication between them
At the end of problem 5 i like how alex said with such confidence and with an almost happy expression on his face that "id allow the train to run over the 5 and then run over the 1" 😂 like hes happy that the people get run over. 😂
I thought it was interesting that he never even considered the trauma of the person that pulled the level. It’s true that if they do nothing everyone still dies, but the act of pulling the level means they are killing five people first before the one. The person pulling the level has to live the rest of their life with that. Not saying he was wrong but I believe it’s something to take into consideration.
Late to the party, but problem 2 is actually interesting from the other angle too. If you are the person at the lever, pulling it before the fat man gets pushed off means you also potentially save the fat man. The person on the bridge could still shove the fat man off to save the 1 person but in pulling the lever early you force them to evaluate one person's life over another person's life while alleviating yourself of having to make that decision.
truee didn't even think of that, assuming the guy on the bridge can tell which tracks the guy switches it too, the more morally correct thing to do is just whoever pushes or pulls the lever the fastest, since hesitating until the other person chooses puts all the responsibility on the other person. The ideal scenario would therefore be that the guy on the bridge pushes the fat guy and the guy on the ground pull the lever at the same time. They both picked the optimal decision at the same moment.
‘Status quo bias’. What a great criticism of Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine. Never heard of this one before. Enjoyed the examples of the trolley problem, some of which were new to me, like the brain in the vat version. As usual, wonderfully presented by Alex.
I think Nozick is full of it. I would enter the machine pretty much immediately. Before he even says "but it will be fake"; you already had me at "better than your current situation."
i think the biggest issue with claiming the fat-man push is the same as the lever pull is that in the lever-pull scenario, all characters are already ingrained in the scenario regardless of your involvement, and in the scenario where you literally push a non-tied person onto the tracks, you are sure, potentially saving 5, but in doing so you are essentially throwing another bystander, like yourself, into the fray as a sacrifice to do so.
It's interesting to me also because if we assume that simply throwing someone in front of the train will stop it, than we can also assume that we could throw ourselves in front of the train to stop it, making it so that the single sacrifice is a willing one.
My thoughts always run along these lines: In the case of the lever, you are the only one who can choose, even if you can communicate with the people on the track, you're the only one who can act in the last second. If, however, you're in a position to push the fat man off the bridge, surely he is also in a position to jump. In the former, you are the only possible actor, however in the latter, by acting, you deny another who has more stake in the issue the chance to act, or not, for himself.
I would argue that the man tied on the branching track is also not ingrained in the scenario. He is tied to train tracks which, if not for your involvement, would be perfectly safe to be tied to. Just as the bridge should be a perfectly safe place to stand on. Meanwhile it is those five that, either due to their own poor decisions or due to their relation to a malicious third party, have ended up on the tracks. And so it is your action to save the firmly involved five that involves these otherwise uninvolved bystanders.
@@benjaminseelig8675 I'm pretty sure that Neil Peart did _not,_ in fact, write all of the lyrics for Yes. Rush, sure, but he wasn't even _in_ Yes, and, y'know, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, and Jon Anderson.
Also you could also say you shouldn’t put the burden of extra trauma on one individual in exchange for the trauma of others because it’s not fair to let one individual Cary the burden of everyone
My personal favourite variation someone showed me wasn’t even a variation. Its the regular problem, but with a third option that’s worse than the others 1) Don’t flip the lever: 5 people die, but you aren’t the cause for any of those deaths. 2) Flip the lever once (or any odd number of times): 1 person dies, but you’re responsible for their death. 3) Flip the lever BACK (or any even number of times): All 5 people die, but you’re now responsible for ALL their deaths. You could’ve left the lever flipped to save them, but you flipped it again and are now the one who is directly why they die.
My take on the Fatman Problem Vs Trolley problem (for anyone who cares): In a trolley problem, the individual tied to the second track is, even if they are not chosen to die, still “involved” in the calamity at hand. They are bound to the track. Perhaps they have to watch the 5 die for their safety, or maybe they are unaware of what’s happening. They are still a major component of the tragedy and moral dilemma. But the Fatman is as uninvolved you. He’s just a bystander. In fact, he’s even less involved, as he has no one to push to stop the train. He could contemplate suicide to save the others, but that is his separate moral dilemma. For you, to push the Fatman is to involve a previous uninvolved party in the situation, removing all of their agency in the situation. Those on the tracks have no agency. They are at your mercy. The Fatman has agency, and begins as someone who is not a part of the problem. Thus pushing him caries vastly more ethical weight than pulling a lever.
I love this analysis omg. It reminds me of the "variation" where instead of a trolley, a doctor has 5 patients who need different organ transplants and if they don’t get them soon they'll die, there aren't organs available at the moment for their procedures. A healthy patient comes up for a check up and their organs happen to match(? the organs that each of the other patients need. If you sacrificed this one patient to save these 5 lives, would it be morally better than letting this healthy patient live and leave and let the 5 patients die? I always thought that it would be better to not sacrifice the healthy person but wasn't sure about how to explain it, and I think your explanation also applies. The healthy patient is a by-stander, and no one goes to the doctor expecting to die to save other lifes
I've always thought of it as a cause-consequence difference. In the trolley, saving 5 people causes 1 person to die In the fatman killing 1 person causes 5 to be saved. From a numbers standpoint, it's the same. but from an ethical one its not (to me at least)
@@mateoferretto2175 That's also valid. The act of saving lives, with one death as a consequence, is very different ethically than the act of killing someone to save others as a consequence.
@@mateoferretto2175 I think of it more as prioritizing vs acting. You prioritize the 5 people, but it’s a question of how much you’re willing to act. Pushing both the lever and the fat man IS killing somebody, but the question is whether or not to involve the fat man or if you can even justify it in real life.
Your answer to the third problem surprised me a lot. As I understood it, the brain-in-a-tank wouldn't actually die, but just experiencing the feeling of being run over by a train. So I thought the question was, would you rather a person die for real or have another person deal with the trauma of having experienced dying. (The problem could be adapted to having the "real" person being very old and the brain-in-a-tank being very young, thus making them have deal with that trauma for a long time vs. someone who was going to die soonish anyway.) Personally, I'd still pull the lever, but it'd be interesting to know if other people would do the same.
Ofc you pull the lever 😂 the only way out of this is to know a bunch of impossible details such as whether or not the person can deal with the trauma or would have rather died
The problem says that the brain can recreate every single experience including terrible pain and death. I feel like if you simulate death then you die. I mean what else would an experience of dying be?
@@RealElevenTimes dying isn't an experice tho, it's a consequence. The brain will simulate the pain of being run over without the actual consequence of the damage said pain is caused by.
@@ZentoBrinebg Okay, but again the problem says that the brain can experience terrible pain and death. I feel like being run over by a car or in this instance a trolley would fall into the "terrible pain" category. I think the problem meant that if the brain was damaged enough in the simulation it would die.
This reminds me of the autonomous car problem questionnaire. Brakes don't work and the car can either swerve or not swerve. If it swerves, it kills an old person, if it doesn't swerve it kills a young person. Making the choice based on age is morally wrong and sets an insane precedent akin to national socialist ideology, yet most defend that way of thinking.
For the fourth problem: You could also just pull one lever, redirecting the trolley to the upper tracks, making you responsible for five deaths and maximizing damadge.
The fourth problem could also be interesting if there was another person operating the second split, so it's either you don't do anything and kill the one person, or you force another person to go through the trolley problem. Plus you can't be certain what they would do, they might not pull the lever, making it so that instead of just the 2 people on the track dying, 5 people who wouldn't even be involved had you not pulled the lever, will die
I don't know, the fact that you will force someone to go through the problem makes it easier to choose killing that one person. Doing differently makes you a coward. You force someone to go through the problem you decided to avoid. By choosing not to kill someone you force someone else to do it, or to allow 5 people to die. Feels like you're transferring the burden, but not really.
The railway geek in me would like to point out that, in the illustration for the trolley problem, the position of the lever indicates that the points are already set for the one person track.
Knowing this: Presuming the person didn't note this. This person pushed another person off the bridge to stop a train; Still 1 person died, but their decision lead to which person. Would you find their action to push or not more or less moral? Would you find this person more or less responsible for the harm they caused or didn't cause?
I know you probably know this, but that's not really the point. Pushing a fat man in front of the trolley wouldn't stop it with 100% certainty. Depending on the trolley's speed, in problem 5, it could potentially get derailed before making it around the U-turn. But we're to leave these factors out when discussing these problems.
I have been in almost exactly same situation in real life. I was waiting at the Footscray train station, in Melbourne, when three guys came walking on the tracks and one driving a small tractor on the track. They were picking up metal plates and garbage, which were spread along the track. I remember I was looking at this unusual behaviour and was wondering if they knew the time of the express train, which soon would drive through. Meanwhile they had reached the far end of the station, where the track run over a small bridge, at the same time of the train, which came hurdling through. The men all jumped over the bridge rail and the train hit the tractor and was lifted several meters up in the air. Everything was a mess afterwards. I stopped thinking and started acting - looking for injured people. Fortunately the train was empty of any people but the driver. He only got minor injuries. The four workers saved their own lives because they jumped off the small bridge. Everything happened so fast, that I never got to the thought of warning the men on the track. You do not have time to contemplate your moral choices in these kinds of situations. Either you act instinctively or you freeze.
I think most people are aware reality would look different. I always answer that I'd divert the trolley AND push the fat man to save 5, morally speaking, but in real life, the psychological barrier to push someone would be too high, I couldn't do it.
@@resir9807 Personally I say I could flip the switch, but I could never push the fat man. In the first case, someone dies no matter what, in the second case, someone dies no matter what. However, the sacrifice is entirely different. It would be like during a rainstorm, letting a wallet fall in a grate to save 5 others swept away in water, the second scenario with the fat man says you need to kick the wallet in to the grate to save the 5 wallets. All bound people and the train are part of a closed system. but the fat man doesn't feel like a part of the system, they just happened to be here.
@@10thletter40 I don't think it's anything to do with the structure of the problem, I just think physicallly pushing someone to their death is just not something most of us are psychologically capable of
@@resir9807 For me at least, pushing someone to their death feels a lot more personal than pulling a lever and having someone die. And I think that's the hang up for most people. I guess it's similar to why shooting someone with a gun is a lot different then stabbing someone. The gun puts distance, both physically and mechanically, between you and the person who is injured or killed (and it's the same with the lever).
One trolley problem I like is one where you see a runaway trolley heading towards a trolley problem scenario, but the lever to switch tracks is really far away and the only way to reach the lever in time is to use a teleporter. But if you use the teleporter, will it still be _you_ pulling the lever?
YESSSSS We need more philosophical videos like this. Please make a series on philosophical videos with references to philosophical literature like Rationality Rule's Kalam Series with Majesty of reason.
I hate to say it (and I'm happy for critique of it) but this is an argument of God's inaction right here. XD God's just left with a train lever, and using his infinite compute ability to try and solve it... sadly, it takes longer than infinite time. :P
ye milk us, we are concentend, my brain dopamine +1 "series?" content! philosophy? i think it work well we get hooked, 1m sub lets go ! random thought ; maybe try doing less high pitch at every last word of sentence, it feel a bit like karen angry inverted GNgngngnn GNnggngn it goes gngngnnGN gngngnGN lolol sorry i thought it was funny
I disagree, depending on how long the train takes. If it takes only a few seconds, the it doesn't matter the order, they died right after the other. But if it takes time. 5 mins. 10, 15? 30 minutes. However long it takes, 1 person freaking out is just himself and his grief. But 5 people will be freaking out, screaming and crying, and freaking out the OTHERS with them as well, making the fear even worse. The 1 person, could accept their deaths, go quiet, close their eyes, and pretend their going to go to sleep and everything will be ok. But with 5 people, someone is going to be wiggling, screaming and freaking out. There will be no calm, no quiet acceptance. Just pure chaos and madness right up to the death.
@@Jirodyne if it's gonna take 5 mins and you can't untie yourself or the person at the lever untie you then you have more reasons to scream than just the one person dying
I’d say that the amount of trauma each person experiences doesn’t matter if they only experience it for a couple seconds. Now if you make the loop take a week, that’s a good trolley problem right there
My favorite is the one where superman swoops in and stops the train before we have to make an ethical decision, thus saving us from the hell that is moral philosophy.
Imagine, if you will, that you are watching 5 people tied to a trolley track from atop a bridge, helpless to stop this, and then some guy starts giving you a rather forceful back rub.
Other good Trolley Problems: - The Friend Dilemma; 1 person you like vs 5 people you dislike. - The Quantum Trolley(fate dilemma); the lever is in a super position and you don't know which track it will take unless you intervene. - The Abraham Lever; The Trolley is headed for 1 person, but you hear what to you is indisputably the voice of God offering you whatever evidence you need to accept their divinity, they tell you to redirect it to kill the 5 people. - Theoretical Genocide; One one track is one person, on the other is a Tron computer with with the only copy of an entire species of sentient programs. Do you value one of your own vs a species of purely computer originated life forms. - The Devil You Know; Someone evil, perhaps the literal incarnation of evil, is on the tracks and you can pull the brakes and keep them alive. Or, you can do nothing and let pure evil persist. The catch of doing nothing, something else will fill this vacuum and gain whatever powers the old embodiment of evil had. What they will do with that evil power, you know not. - The Ol' Swapper-O; This trolley problem was set up by an Dick Dasterdly. You can't untie anyone, cuz he's gots himself a gun. You are allowed to swap two people. Do you switch one person with another to 'optimize' who lives and who dies?
obviously save the one I know. don’t touch it. Nah I don’t touch it. Genocide it is. Pure evil is pure evil. it won’t change just because who holds the pure evil trait changes. I do nothing. Depends on who is on the track, someone I know and/or like? Yes I will save them. None i know and/or like? I do nothing
@@ImperfectVoid8479 2nd: I presume so. I haven't heard of that many one-directional levers 3rd: Presumably there's a good reason, it's God after all 5th: At least we know about this evil and could figure out how to counter it, we won't know about a future evil.
Assuming no consequinces other than trauma for me: 1 keep the one I like 2 move it to 1 person (btw you can just say random, super position is kinda overkill here) 3 as by my beliefs God is omnipotent, to prove it's divinity I ask it to make me omnipotent as well, use ultimate wisdom to assess why do I need to choose 5 people, make my own decision, live happy life forever after 4 Save programs 5 Stop the trolley. It is easier to control known evil 6 Swap Dick Dasterdly with a single person, run him over
@@_dekinci I feel like you’re just avoiding the problem for number 3. It’s not “plus get one superpower!” It’s “water evidence is required”. As in. You KNOW it’s God and the question is, do you pull despite not understanding.
Another problem with the experience machine is that it assumes the only factor is "realness" and seems to ignore the fact that we have connections to our world and they would be affected as well, potentially hurting or abandoning those around us in order to experience a better reality for ourselves.
@@idreadFell365 idk about your country but here it's illegal to not provide first-aid when you witness an accident. it's true that the line of responsibility has to be drawn somewhere though. we cannot be blamed for not spending every waking second trying to rescue people.
@@holleey that’s sounds totalitarian to me, to jail someone for not doing what you want. While some may not like it, there’s nothing objectively wrong with inaction and no one should feel obligated to do the moral thing. So yeah you don’t live in a free country.
My favorite version of the trolley problem is when you see a train going for one person on the tracks, then you switch it to the other rail, and only then do you realize the train is now going to hit 5 people. The show "The Good Place" also had an excellent solution to the trolley problem, they suggested adding an extra spike attachment to the wheels of the train so it could get all 6 people.
One thing to consider is that to my knowledge, trains do not kill slowly. Instead they vaporize their victims into a red mist. Thus, there is not much real pain. The simulation of a brain would effectively be the same as just turning it off. Alternatively, to a human it is not much different than someone getting Thanos snapped (only much faster, and a bit more red)
I was in a similar situation. I was walking alongside of a train track. There was a switch lever. On one track there was a large weevil that was destined to be killed. On the other track was a smaller weevil. Obviously, I had to choose the lesser of two weevils.
I had the exact opposite response to problem 5: I instinctively came at it from the angle that 1 person witnessing 5 deaths and then being left completely alone with that trauma is far worse than 5 people witnessing 1 death, but being able to share that burden, knowing others are struggling with it, and being able to support one another feels far less terrible to me. I suppose that speaks to the value one places on community and how much sharing trauma with others can ease the burden of it, which will vary greatly from person to person. That said, it would also depend greatly on how much time separates the deaths, whether the remaining victims KNOW they're dying immediately after, and a ton of other factors.
Same, was looking for a comment like this The whole time listening to his breakdown of problem 5 rubbed me wrong bc all I could think of was the poor guy being all alone after seeing the other deaths vs a small group with the pain spread among them
In real life there are support groups and therapy, plus their friends and family. And just because they all saw it doesn’t mean they will comfort each other, hell they could make it exponentially worse.
I also kind of wonder about this same problem, taking it to extremes. Say you keep adding 1 person to the five. The first time you ask if they would let 5+1 die. Next you ask if they let 6+1 die. Eventually you get to "would they let all of humanity die" and not flip the lever. Since it's a thought experiment, you can even get to the point to where you would let an infinite amount of people die or flip the lever. I dunno. I'm not a philosophy major.
That’s a good point! Morality is way too complicated lol. In most situations, I use a form of utilitarianism to make decisions, and I also think utilitarianism can justify human rights, but there’s a certain point when even the deontologist will violate those rights.
Never did philosophy either.. but I'd think this points to how we weigh the "good" and "bad" factors in real life. We have our own emotions, knowledge of a situation, assumptions, how it will affect us personally vs others, etc One of the beauties of the trolley problem is it cleans up much of that mess, for clarity purposes. Bringing back in specific "messiness" to the process would allow for an even deeper understanding of one self and others.
I think most people can't divorce the moral question from the pragmatic one. Most people don't want to go to prison for killing someone, so if in doubt they'd most likely just leave it alone - especially in the case where you're pushing someone onto railway tracks in an attempt to stop a train. I can just imagine explaining that to the authorities. _"Please explain why you pushed a man in front of that train to die with the other five people"_ _"I thought a man might stop a train..."_
My answer to this question would be to pull out an anti-tank missile and blast the trolley into a pile of Thanos dust. Sure it would kill more people but it would beat the shit out of the question.
I think the fact that it is more obvious that "pulling the lever" will "solve" the problem, compared to "pushing someone in front of the trolley" plays a part in the longer thinking time. You kind of have to figure out if it actually is the same problem first (in reality, it seems unlikely that pushing someone in front of a trolley would actually stop it), but since it's part of the problem definition, you have to accept it. You have to image that you are part of the scenario, and pretend that you somehow _know_ that pushing the man will save the others.
@@mon4d I'd argue that inaction can be just as wrong as action. If you were to witness someone who is heavily injured on the sidewalk, begging for help while you do nothing and just watch them bleed to death, then you are at least partially responsible if this person dies. In the trolley dilemma, it would be a more complicated situation with more angles, but you'd still refuse to help people in need. It would still be an action that you could be held accounteable for. Whoever you chose to die, you are responsible for it. The moment you realise that you can save any of them, you're gonna be responsible for someone's death. About not understanding the situation exactly; In real life, this would propably be true, since the controls for railway tracks and the means to supervise them are propably not that intuitive. But in the though experiment, we do know the outcomes and we know how to control which one takes place. We understand the whole experiment clearly, so we understand the situation clearly.
My favorite is a Factorio one; "Your friend is standing on the tracks in the path of an iron train. You can pull the lever to have the train miss your friend, but it will reduce your total iron throughput per minute by 6%. Do you pull the lever?"
When you mentioned the Experience Machine, I had a thought as to why people would prefer not to be in it generally. It's about being able to control your own experience, rather than it being "real" or not. If you know you're going into a machine, you instinctively have a slight distrust in an object (the machine) never failing or of it taking your self-control away, and you'll quickly start to think of rationalisations for that feeling. I think if you can't intuitively sense (or assume) the consequences, there's doubt about safety. Similarly, with the big man on the bridge. Even if you know you can push him off and the trolley stops, you still vaguely foresee more consequences within and after that than pulling the lever, and you instinctively want to avoid them. It's only by abstracting the question so there are no perceived later consequences that the more rational option resolves easily, and you can only do that by intentionally thinking of it that way, taking longer. (I just wanted to write this down while I thought of it.)
Which is interesting, because I never thought about the possibility that this experience machine could fail, and until you mentioned it I thought to myself that I would happily go into the machine. But if we take into account that this machine has the possibility of breaking down, then yeah there's no way I'd choose it because it would suck to have a decade inside the machine of bliss, and then get booted back into reality where I'm now probably even worse off than before from not doing anything or maintaining relationships for a decade.
This is accurate and taking into account wider consequences of the actions is often the only way to solve the problem. However there is an insidious trap in doing that. Mistaking possibility for probability. Just because machines can fail does not mean this particular machine has even a slight chance of failure. Unless you have data to actually calculate a probability of occurrence then the possibility should not be a major deciding factor unless the possibility has a result of an existential threat variety. Of course the first action should be to gather more information to be able to calculate a probability but we are talking if for some reason you must make a choice with insufficient time or resources to do that. On top of this the illusion of control often warps what we thing the probability is rather than us focusing on the probability as it was calculated. Think for instance about the chance of a car accident. It's quite high yet we all get in cars on a daily basis. There is an illusion that we are in control of the car therefore we aren't at risk but in reality you have no control over other drivers, mechanical failures, freak accidents. Instead the logical thing to do would be to weigh the risk vs the reward and make a decision based on calculated net gain. So if the machine's chance of failure is identical to the chance of getting in a car crash it shouldn't matter to anyone who gets in a car daily that it could fail. However it will matter still to most people because it lacks that illusion of control. When you take this though pattern to an extreme you end up refusing to ever risk suffering for a chance at a better life which on a societal level means society never tries to fix its problems.
Given the high percentage of people that take recreationally drugs to alter their consciousness I would guess that quite a lot of people would go into the machine.
Experience machine == Startrek Holodeck. People seem to enjoy said holodeck a lot I would program a sex orgy with 5 Playboy pets and never leave the machine again.
My all-time favourite would be the one where we have an infinte amount of people on either track, but the first track places each one at intervals of integer numbers whilst the seccond one places them each time twice as close. Anyway there will be an infinite number of victima, you can only choose how frecuently they would be diying
easy, less frequent. The vast majority of these infinite people will be able to live out their days undisturbed by the train still travelling towards them. It's actually kind of like life, everybody has to die sometime. If we can double every bodies life that would be insane progress
What fucked up mathematician came up with that one? Either way, the trolly will stop at some point, they aren’t designed for running people over, after all.
11:00 I think another important aspect as to why people prefer the real experiences is that the knowledge of interacting with real people is really important, because even if you interact with them through a simulated mean (like the matrix), you are still able to positively impact the experience of others, while the experience machine could be complete bliss, but you'd never be able to help another, even if you thought you did
With regards to injecting yourself into the situation and so becoming a part of it, if you are there and having to decide what you are or are not going to do, you're already a part of it. Even your inaction makes you a part. In the same sense as just standing by and watching as someone drowns when you could have saved them.
I think the brain in a vat thought experiment (not the trolley problem) also assumes that the person lives a fairly tolerable life. I think if you asked someone in an iron lung if they would like to be put in the machine, they would most likely say yes. I think there's a line somewhere where beyond a certain point of suffering in someone's life most people would like to be put in the machine, but it'd be hard to identify where the line is.
This was awesome. I never really got in touch with ethics/philosophy outside of school (though i liked the subject), so seeing someone so professional and with such attention to detail like you discuss these types of questions, and looking at it with more perspectives and possible solutions, without trying to find THE answer is so enjoyable! Great video
12:07 even if the person was aware where they were not actually there, I'd still not pull the lever, because the dead person won't know after they're dead, but the computer brain thingy will carry that trauma and pain of being run over by a train.
With the track loop problem, you didn't consider the trauma of the person deciding who is to die. That person could live for many years with the guilt of their decision.
If you think (at 3:20) that the Trolley Problem is a "subtle critique of utilitarianism," then you clearly don't understand the Trolley Problem. That's because it's an EXPLICIT critique of utilitarianism. That was Thompson's point in devising the problem, and she wasn't subtle about it at all. It's supposed to be a difficult problem for the utilitarian who thinks that the moral outcome is always the one that results in the greatest amount of utility. But then maybe that explains why you likewise don't understand Nozick's Experience Machine, which is ALSO an explicit critique of utilitarianism.
Genuinely I think the implausibility of one fat dude somehow being able to stop a runaway trolley also affects peoples answers. I know that you're supposed to just take for granted that it will, but *instinctively* it feels like it wouldn't work, and that plants another seed of doubt
6:30 it seems obvious to me why there is a difference in the fat man or lever scenario and I do not think this is not just emotional. The fat man can make his own choice in this matter. That makes an insanely huge difference. When you are at the lever, you and only you have control. You and only you have to make a decision. The fat man is also not involved (like you he is just a bystander) in the first place. With the switch situation, all people are already involved. What makes both very different is also the fact that there is a scenario where the fat man would not end up stopping the train. It would kill the fat man and everyone on the rails. Not only did you not save everyone. Now you are also a well-intentioned murderer. This problem does not exist in the case of the lever. In other words. With the switch situation, you have to make a choice to involve yourself. In the fat man situation, you have to make a choice to involve yourself and the fat man. Things can also go wrong in more ways with the fat man. This in my opinion makes it two completely different scenarios. The only thing that binds them is the fact that the outcome MIGHT be the same.
yeah, when I was considering that scenario, I kept coming back to a place where I had to just assume based on the way the problem was stated that pushing the fat man would 100% work
Aka to shorten it: With the lever, everyone impacted is already involved in the situation and is in mortal danger. With the fat man, you involve an innocent person and put them in mortal danger yourself.
Aye - this “meta” removal of choice makes it feel significantly worse if it were to happen. No matter the actual outcome, if the man throws himself off he may be deemed a hero. If you were to push the man, you would be considered, at the very least, a massive dick.
An additional dimension to the problem is the intuition that you will have to explain and be judged for your decision afterwards, by people who may not have the full story and will definitely not be perfectly rational actors. If someone catches a phone video of you pushing a man off the bridge in front of a train, it doesn't matter whether it was the right choice, you're still going to be ostracized or imprisoned on that basis alone. When you have to stand in front of the family and loved ones of the person you killed, which do you think will despise you more? The family of the one person who you killed by pulling the lever, or the family of the person you shoved off the fucking bridge? In which case do you think the jury will be more lenient?
I agree. Though even with the best case scenario with the fat man, you are still a murderer anyways, which is why I personally couldn't do it. Assuming that I had time to actually think in both cases, I doubt that I'd even think of the idea of pushing another bystander. And, like you said, that assumes that the trolly would even stop. Sure, in terms of the thought experiment it may be guaranteed, but if I were to insert myself into the situation as best I can, in no way would I even get to that line of thinking. At least with the lever it's a lot more straight forward, and also like you said, you aren't involving someone other than yourself. Also, even the people you end up saving in case of the fat man problem, I truly doubt that anyone would thank you, which would make sense. Yeah they'd be happy that they lived, but if they saw you push the man they'd be horrified of you and what you done and most likely you'd go to jail. That is unless no one were to see you, of which no one has brought up that part of it. Plus even if I came to the conclusion to push someone, that trauma would be insane. You saved 5 people at the expense of your own sanity, even more so than the lever.
Honestly, I really like your thinking process. Explaining it outloud, I felt my opinion shift a couple times in the same situation but I am more set in the stance than if I didn't take the time to listen. Great content!
I’d argue that when pushing the person off the bridge, you’re involving someone external to the situation. Whereas when you’re pulling the lever the person tied up is perceived to be a part of the situation and already entangled. I think if the person on the bridge was also tied up then more people would push them off, as they’d perceive them in the same way as the singular person tied to the tracks. Trapped in the situation.
There has always been a third solution. If your quick enough you can pull the lever right as the front wheels pass over the fork forcing the back of the trolley into a seperate track breaking the trolley and saving everyone.
You might want to read about the Kobayashi Maru, originally described in _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan._ You’re given an impossible scenario to see how you handle it; cheating the system says a lot about you, and therefore still makes it a valuable exercise.
2 things, One. Great video! Although I'm not sure if I agree with everything Alex is saying, there are still so many thought provoking ideas and it is really well delivered as usual. And two. Thanks for putting the sponsorship at the end of the video so I can at least choose to watch it... Whether that be a morally/ethically good thing to to or not!
I had a ton of fun reading and replying to the comments the video was very interesting and the comments are perfect this was a very good experience thank you
I came to the same conclusion on the trolley in a loop, but for different reasons. My reasoning was to shorten the duration of the dread of knowing there was a trolley coming for the most people.
I'm torn on that one for different reasons (both of which stretch the parameters of the thought experiment). If you kill the one person, you buy yourself some time. Something unexpected *might* then intervene to spare the five (the trolley topples off the track, emergency crews have a chance to block it, etc.), which would be better than the other way around. However, if you kill the five people, that might be enough to stop the trolley (especially if a fat man can do it on his own). That way you only kill five people instead of six. Since both options rely on hypotheticals, I'd probably go with the second (kill five), since that's more likely to be effective than delaying in hopes of a miracle.
Isn’t this scenario just an analogy for life? The train of death is coming for us all. Shouldn’t we act in a way that enables more people to live longer lives? I think letting the five die first is equivalent to “life sucks I’m going to drink myself too death”
Basing ethics on intention can be dangerous. In my opinion, ethics are based on the choices we make. We can't choose our emotions or what's motivating us, only our actions. If we started believing that even if someone does a good thing, it's still not ethical unless their intentions were selfless, that would limit the amount of actual good things people do considerably. Even something like donating to charity, many are (at least partly) motivated by the pleasure we get within ourselves for doing it
@@icikle and matt and everyone else who thinks like this: what you all imagine as 'an impossible altruism' is actually what i would consider an internal barometer for good action - it usually does signal a deep sense of ease, rightness, goodness within oneself.
_"...that would limit the amount of actual good things people do considerably."_ So? If my dick was twice as long with would be longer than it is now. And then what? That still doesn't show why it's good or better to base ethics in actions and leave intentions out of it entirely than to take the intentions into account as well. One of the dangers of basing ethics in intentions (too much) that i can think of is that it can and most likely will result in thought policing and in focusing (too much) on what people are thinking and how you can figure that out. I can't be arsed to back up or discuss why thought policing (yourself or others) is bad, so let's just assume we agree that it is for the sake of the argument. Anyway, it's not an if question. You require both the action and the intention and judge according to practicality. Also, there's context and behavioural patterns and consequences, so those should also be taken into account. If there's anything one should take away from this video is that it's utterly stupid to have one view and expect it to work in all situations. It's much better to have all views and simply have a preference and weigh something more than another based on what's practical and/or desired. For instance, with the deontologist challenge, you'll necessarily shove in some utalitarianism or you'll kill two people. Likewise, if you judge someone on an action, you most likely will be wrong about the effect they have as a person or part of a group. I think you wouldn't mind killing a dog lover if it was Hitler. And even a series of actions might seem perfectly fine until you see the context. Someone's intentions might be great and the next day all of their children are drowned in a bath. You wouldn't call them an evil psychopath unless you don't care one bit about being correct or about consequences perhaps. Intentions matter a great deal, but it's just not the whole story and the same goes for actions. Actions matter, but it's not the whole story. What if I were to give you great comfort for the rest of your life, and the way I do it is by telling you your broken and you just need to worship my deity and everything will be fine when you die, so you don't need to worry and you just need to remember you're loved by this deity, would that be ethical? Would it be if I sincerely believed that to be true? How will you judge me on my actions?
I think it's tricky because obviously the outcome of one dead person is preferable to the outcome of five dead people, however as Alex said, which one would you rather be friends with? The person who kills one person produces the preferable outcome, but I think there's still a strong argument that they're the worse person. I'm not sure if it's morally "good" to unintentionally save people in the process of hurting fewer people. It produces a preferable outcome, but is it morally good? Let's consider a different version (which I totally made up on the spot so it may not be a great example). Say I'm someone who happens to be keen on committing murder, and one day I stab a guy to death outside the convenience store to fulfill my murder fantasy. Unbeknownst to me, this particular guy had several loose screws and was actually on his way home to kill his wife and their four children. Thus, by murdering this guy I actually saved five lives, but saving those lives was not my intention. I just wanted to kill someone. Is that a moral choice just because it had a positive outcome? Obviously in the trolley version the person at the lever knows they're saving five by killing one - but does that knowledge make it a good decision even if they weren't taking it into consideration when making their choice? EDIT: To clarify, what I'm getting at is basically a distinction between a BETTER choice and a MORE MORAL choice. Are they necessarily the same?
I thought this was gonna be a video about the absolutely insane trolley problems like harambe on one side, betty white on the other. I was pleasantly surprised
17:17 Consider this, these 5 people now can form a group therapy session since they all have seen the same event and can relate with each other making the trauma more easy to overcome
I understand that the fat man trolley variant is supposed to exist in philosophical ideals where you know for absolute certain that not only will you be able to push the man onto the track, but that his body will in fact stop the trolley before it can harm anyone else. My hesitation with that version has always come down to those details.
Imagine pushing a fat guy of a bridge watching him get splattered with the other 5 and trying to explain that to literally anyone why you thought it would work.
@@Printerpenguin it's a hypothetical bro, it's going to stop the train. Thinking anything other than yes or no is just your mind trying to make a workaround the problem so you don't have actively think about it. It's your brain coping over having to choose
@@ragegaze3482not really lol in the hypothetical scenario I would push him every day of the week but in reality there is no guarantee that would for any reason stop a train so there is no real scenario where it makes sense to do so
17:18 I agree with this line of reasoning, but also in this scenario, everybody dies regardless of your actions, so I think that it’s preferable here to not pull the lever, as you won’t be actively deciding the death of a person. If you pull the lever here, the trauma is much higher, and you will have chosen to negatively involve yourself in a situation with an already unchanging outcome.
On the loop one, you also have to consider that by doing nothing you are refusing to be involved and the people die knowing you could do nothing, whereas if you pull the lever you are allowing 5 people to witness you kill that one person first and then forcing them to wait their turn for death.
The thing about the third problem is that once the person actually on the tracks is hit by the trolley, they won’t experience the pain for very long at all. But the person in the simulated reality doesn’t die. They have to live with the mind shattering pain of being hit by the trolley, but still living. Presumably this could happen again and again to them, while each new person tied to the tracks feels the pain and dies only once. In my opinion, considering this, one is morally obligated to not pull the lever and kill the real person every time. EDIT: I fundamentally misunderstood the actual problem, it is in fact more moral to destroy the computer. I was thinking of a hypothetical problem in which you either send a real or virtual trolley to kill the real or virtual person.
your alternative version is still interesting though! Another version with a twist might be that the computer and the vat are both on the track, so they experience the pain and then actually do die.
Thats the problem with those scenarios, people dont 'spawn' next to levers, Why i am involved in this scenario in the first place? How i get the knowledge of the lever? I am employee of trolley tracks? i am just passing? Why didnt try to cut the ropes instead? the trolley problem isnt fair or make sense enough to me care, or choose
@@RoyMatzem true but it's not really important for the problem to be super specific and realistic, at least that's how I see it. It's just a way to ask about utilitarianism vs deontology.
Alex ! I love your brain and your eloquence and your philosophical consistency - you’ve put me in the same position you were in when you posed your meat eater’s case for veganism - I’m ethically and philosophically completely onboard and am just working towards putting it into practice on a daily basis
I went Vegan overnight after thinking on that video. It wasn't the only factor, but it was one of them. I used to eat meat, eggs, and dairy every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. I was also obese, prediabetic, and had low Testosterone. Now I face none of those vices, and it was extremely easy despite making the switch so suddenly.
Here's my answers: Simple explanation of relevant moral system: - Contractualism with a default assumption of generally maximizing health, happiness, and freedom for the greatest number of people (shortened to "wellbeing"). Note that I'm not necessarily avoiding suffering. - Bodily autonomy is above all other contracts (meaning, one cannot "use" someone's body without their consent, like in the "bridge" or "doctor" versions of the problem.) - I consider choosing inaction to hold equal responsibility to choosing action (meaning if both tracks have one person each, pulling the lever is morally identical to choosing not to pull the lever). Problem one solution: The lever-puller creates a more moral situation simply because fewer people die. Since no victims state the desire to die by trolley: fewer deaths maximize wellbeing. After this situation, the lever-puller may still be jailed for his action given that their motivations can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (simply as a means of preventing them from killing people on purpose more in the future). Motivation is irrelevant to the morality of a situation under my view: but motivation can be relevant in law situations. Problem two solution: Pushing the fat man violates bodily autonomy, forcing a trolley problem onto another person does not. Neither situation is moral, but pushing the fat man is less moral. Optimal solution for morality is still killing the one person on the track. Problem three solution: Simulated moral experience do have the same moral value as real experiences. Pulling the lever is the most moral choice in this situation: only because the brain in the vat does not appear to die (we can make them a new computer so they can have experiences/friends again). If the brain in the vat does die: then pulling the lever or not pulling the lever are identical in moral value. Problem four solution: Easy for my moral system, you only kill the one person. Double-pull for sure. Problem five solution: As you mention, there is likely diminishing returns on trauma in this situation. Killing the 5 first seems more moral. Even if the one victim received 5x the trauma: there's also the effect of time on that trauma to consider. It's unlikely anyone here wants their suffering prolonged and if they must die: they'd rather it be quick. I agree we let this one go without pulling given the limited information we have.
Episode two of Trolley Problem Memes is available now! th-cam.com/video/sHP_Yp6QSxU/w-d-xo.html
Here's another solution to the problem: th-cam.com/video/-N_RZJUAQY4/w-d-xo.html
Why did you spell it wrongly in the title of this video?
Foot must be on the ground. ##### She never knew the problems of humankind.
@@icturner23 It's time you knew: he's English, and they often spell some words differently from the way Americans do. It isn't wrong, it's English.
If you pull the lever, the trolly will derail due to the sharp turn. If the trolly tips over, it will probably still slide over the five people and the chance that it will also catch that one person on the rails is quite high. Then you have six victims instead of five.
Pushing that fat person off the bridge is also not an option because there is no guarantee that the trolly will stop in time before it reaches the people on the rails.
If you were sure that the trolly would slow down a lot in that case, the best option you have is to first push the fat one off the bridge and then pull the lever. The trolly might derail, but it would have lost so much momentum that it would not move any further and would no longer hit the people on the rails.
But of course a real hero jumps in front of the train himself.
dilemmas, dilemmas.
I like the one where you can’t do anything to stop the trolley from running over an endless line of people, but you can change the color of the trolley, which is nice
Make it rainbow coloured and cover it in daisies! Or make it red!
I like the one about choosing between 2 infinite lines of people, but one infinity was larger than the other.
That one is political, don't mean to burst your bubble
imagine getting kiled by RGB gamer trolley
@@IETass I’m aware it’s political
My favourite trolly problems meme is the the “Hedonist’s Trolley Problem”. The trolley can hit five and it does a “sick loop-da-loop” OR it hits one but you don’t get to see it do the loop-da-loop.
The choice is obvious
@@ruthlesspopcorn9426 yes the loop de loop
The need of the one over the needs of the loop-da-loop
🪦🪦🪦🪦🪦🚃➿
@@csar07. Well, the one who isn’t hit also gets to see the loop-da-loop so it’s actually the needs of two.
My favorite one is where the trolley is running over an infinite number of people and the prompt says "you can stop the trolley at any time, but would that really be fair to all the people it already killed?"
"where you stop making loss is profit" is a turkish idiom which is kinda self explenatory which means if you are making a loss, or bad things are happening and the moment you do something to stop it, you are actually kind of profiting or did a good thing since you have avoided further loss/bad things. There is also the fact that equity doesn't mean equality. In the considiration of these, stopping the trolley is the only moral thing to do. Because you can not ressurect someone who is dead, they are irreversibly gone. In anohter aspects to this. it is undair to say that other should die too because there are people who already died. Why should alive people suffer becuase some other people died? it is not fait to say people should suffer because some did.
thanks for coming to my ted talk
If you pull the lever, you killed a countably infinite number of people. If you pull it a finite amount of time later, you killed a countably infinite number of people. Both outcomes are exactly the same. Don't believe me? Give everyone a unique number representing the order they were killed (0 being the current position of the trolley, negative numbers being people killed in the past and positive numbers are people yet to be killed). In the first situation, you killed -1, -2, -3, ...
In the second situation, you killed 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ...
But there is a bijection between the two sets f(x) = x - 5 therefore both sets are exactly the same size.
That sounds a little like a Student Loan Forgiveness parallel 😆
@@EagerSleeper actually I believe that meme was made right around the height of that topic
@@EagerSleeper It is a parallel to basically every boomer talking point.
I like the one that goes "You can stop the trolley at anytime, saving everyone, but doing so means that, as you untie them, you would have to engage in some brief small talk"
no hablo ingles
This one is brutal
Is it called Curb your trolley?
@@CyanideCarrotinglés*
I'm sorry people on the track, but there is really only one answer to that.
"You can stop the trolly at any time, but you will no longer be able to use the threat of the trolly hitting the people to garner the votes of the people on the tracks"
"you also paid for the trolley to be built"
@@cleanerben9636 American politics at their finest
@@velocityraptor2890 Only american? You sure?
@@xtrems2 I never said there couldn't be more
"I'm using war as a business to end war as a business"
“Babe come over”
“I can’t right now, I’m experiencing an Ethical Dilemma”
“My entire Family isn’t home”
*“I know”*
You wouldn't happen to know where they are would you?
Ahh I saw this comment on reddit too lol
Unus, Annus, UNUS, *ANNUS*
@@OrcinusDrake lmfao
@@t_c5266 I don't get it lol
My favorite one is the “moral Philosophers Trolley problem”
There is actually nobody tied to the track, but you are a moral philosopher. Would you tie people to the tracks to save your job?
I've just unlocked a whole new internet
The real question is why the hell am I a moral philosopher and not a cool actor?
This is actually the reality you live in right now
Now i know who is going around tying people up to tracks
Well.. since they closed the philosophy factory down the road, I'm willing give it a shot!
The brain-in-a-vat situation is a bit more complicated as the brain is drawn as not being on the rail, which could imply the individual contained in the brain might survive the experience. So the question there, in text form, could be: "would you rather permanently kill someone or make someone live with the trauma of experiencing being killed?"
exactly! I was so peeved he never pointed that out
Important distinction!
It says they experience death
@@gwilymhughes3512It says they *experience* death, but not that they actally die. Experiencing something requires being alive.
@@StickmanCorphe didn’t explore the consequences of that implication either way
My favourite one is 'There is no one on the track, but you can pull the lever to bring the trolley closer to you so you can wave to all the people'
BUT they will be late to their destination. They won’t know you were the one who made them late. But you’ll know.
The good ending
I like this one so much 😂 Thank you
"you can bet I'd be pulling the lever twice"
Proceeds to kill all 7 people by dual track drifting
how tf do you kill all ?
@@dudono1744 duel track drifting
oh ok, guess that works
oh ok, guess that works
Where’s the seventh guy coming from?
I love the long explanation about how the brain in the vat has moral value getting undercut by “Well, the brain in the vat has no friends, so”
So rude. I would definitely be friends with brain in the vat
@@tatiana4050 I mean...we are all just a brain in a vat. The vat is just made of skin and bone.
I mean. The brain's imaginary friends have as much consciousness as real people.
@@Syuvinya but the imaginary friends would be erased by killing the brain, they wouldn't experience any trauma. The friends of the person not in a vat would have to live without the person.
@@Syuvinya um, nope
My favorite trolley problem is the one where you can pull the lever to divert the trolley onto a track with no people, and everyone is saved, but you'd be hailed as a hero and a bunch of people would want to shake your hand and congratulate you, and the media would want interviews, and it's just so much social interaction you just don't have the spoons for.
Fuck them people, being famous is a nightmare for me😭
m.th-cam.com/video/uZdv-TtiMkg/w-d-xo.html
I... really need those spoons.
Aside from the "a fat man on the bridge" situation, there is a technical (but not moral) solution to this class of problems. A Japanese engineer created a miniature railroad model based on the conditions in the original problem and conducted experiments. He discovered that if he pulled the lever right after the front wheels of the trolly went in one direction but before the hind wheels went there, the trolly got off the track and stopped before it hit anyone. He repeated it multiple times and everytime he successfully stopped the trolly. 😆
Wait so it wouldn't start multi track drifting?
That's a shame.
Finding a third solution by thinking creatively hmm
@@lily_littleangel yeah, I was hoping that was his solution
@@Geostelar4920 almost like no imaginary scenario is beyond the creative ingenuity of humanity to solve no matter how much they try to box us in
Omg it’s like a Star Trek or Doctor Who episode
What I like about the trolley problem is the fact that no matter what I ultimately think the more moral action is, I still have no idea how I'd respond if put in that situation.
There was actually a real-life experiment done by Vsauce (with a mere visual simulation of people working on the track using monitors, and the unsuspecting participants being mentally cared for immediately afterwards, of course). The real-life solution was that most people would just freeze out of fear of responsibility and do nothing.
That's actually the original intent of the thought experiment
I’d probably panic and forget to make a decision
I like the fact that you are not responsible for murder, so you are not morally culpable.
@@52flyingbicyclesI’d start the multitrack drifting variation somehow
I like the one that goes
"You finally found and killed him, the person who was tying all these people to the tracks in the first place."
"So you killed one person in order to save more people from death?"
No. It was to provide justice for those who are already dead.
@@Niyucuatro The right answer
@@Niyucuatro both
@@Eshtian not eally. Even if he had stoped with the track tying, he still deserves punishment.
@@Niyucuatro well ya, but assuming he was still doing it, killing in order to stop him from doing it further is also a valid reason
For Problem 1: At 4:15. Instead of asking who you'd rather be friends with, you could also ask if you'd rather live in a society where people just happen to act optimally in a utilitarian sense without any internal moral compass. While you might not like them, your life - and everyone else's - might still be objectively better. I feel that question is a lot harder to answer.
and morally crypled one is like "i can kill this man, who will destroy whole world. But i will not do it, cause than i will be involved"
Exactly, utilitarianism is saved once you think on a society based level.
To much wishful thinking in your variant
It's also possible that the resulting society would be alienating, which might outweigh the advantages.
This is worse than having no internal moral compass. This is active sadism
«you can stop the trolley at any time, but then the saved people will make a party which you’ll have to attend and hang out and shake hands, etc»
That's it they're all dead
Free food so yes
The two types of men right here
My favorite meme variant of the trolley problem is as follows:
Sisyphus is pushing a boulder along the track to Hilbert's Grand Hotel; as it contains an infinite number of guests, they might not be able to accommodate Sisyphus or his boulder; you have the option to divert Sisyphus onto another track, at the end of which is the Ship of Theseus, which would be destroyed by the boulder. Is Sisyphus happy?
I know this one! No!
Dont divert and he will be happy, Hilberts hotel will have enough room. Just ask everyone in room n to move to room n+1 (so the person in room 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 3, and so on), then Sisyphus and Co. gets room 1.
Haha I know philosophy words
@@BLUEGENE13 you seem dumb.
I saw it as Sisyphus is rolling a boulder towards Monty Hall, who has 4 doors. The first is the grand hotel with infinite guests. The second is the ship of theseus. The third is Schrodinger's Cat, and sisyphus' boulder would destroy the box, causing the cat to be observed. The fourth is another Sisyphus going through the monty hall problem, and the boulder would put that Sisyphus out of his misery, though forcing the old one to do a second problem. Is Sisyphus happy?
For the loop problem I'd leave... I'm the only one staying alive in this situation so I REALLY should avoid traumatising myself by seeing six people being brutaly run over by a trolley.
I think CosmicSceptic is wrong in his assessment of the 5th problem. You should totally pull the lever and kill one person first. Mental suffering from seen someone die is far less "bad" in comparison to actually dying. Everybody dies and question is how soon. If you can postpone 5 minds from stopping existing rather than one you should certainly do it. If still not convinced imagine we start modifying conditions. From the picture we could assume that death of one group will follow after another in 5-15 seconds. What if the loop was 3 hours long? 1 day? Month? Year? That is why I think rational thing to do is to pull the lever - you can not predict the future and so maybe this 5 people will somehow survive.
@@MrMpakobec i disagree.
@@MrMpakobec Damn making them suffer knowing their inevitable fate. They are tied up you would be forcing 5 people to be tortured for longer. As opposed to letting one person go through that torture.
@@tommysalami420 For me bad existing is almost infinitely better than nice nothingness (unless all you feel pain so intensive that world around you stop existing). The fact that 5 people will see death of one is nothing compare to their own death and they have some time to do things. They can say something or communicate in other way. If there were no meaningful time delay between deaths of the groups there would be no choice you could make and no trolley problem.
@@tommysalami420 I don’t know maybe it would be more time to come to peace with what’s going to happen & gather thoughts
I think the problem with "the trolley problem" is that some other evil force tied up all 6 people, dehumanizing and discussing what to do with their lives, when in reality, that 3rd party mysterious person has all the blame when the problem starts, and if you pull the lever, you still probably dont have the blame, in the end game, pushing the fat person, that, you are pushing a free person, into a situation, that you would be guilty of
THIS is exactly what I was thinking about!! What a coincidence I actually found someone thinking the same think. Thank you!!
My favorite is the hedonist's trolley problem. "You can pull the lever to redirect the trolley and save five people, but you won't get to see the trolley do the totally sick loop-de-loop"
I think the reason people are more hesitant to push the fatman is rather obvious. He's not already tied to the tracks. He's not truly involved in the trolley problem unless you push him onto the tracks. In the lever example, for whatever reason, the lone guy is already there and part of the trolley problem.
This variant is dumb in many ways like a lot said the fat guy cannot be fat enough to stop the trolley but in a world where it was possible pushing him is the way he is not an innocent bystander cause he's watching at that point there's two solution he want to help or not if he help he's a hero and I will tell his tale but if he don't he's the meany and it's clearly the best thing to do to push him
I mean the attached people are the true victim of this story
Him by seeing the thing is involved as much as you he has probably traumatized to have to make a choice and that's why he didn't already jump maybe he's trying and need help and ofc if I'm the fattiest one I'll jump
Imagine your last conversation with someone is about your weight to know what is the most moral thing to do (the fattiest will have more chance of stopping the trolley)
Gracefully no fat people will ever be armed in this way cause everyone know it is not possible in our reality to stop a trolley like that ^^
I completely agree. Like he offered a critique of utilitarianism, but then took as purely utilitarian approach to the fat man scenario. The fat man is a bystander who you are involving and then killing. The person tied to the track is already somehow involved.
I find it straightforward to phrase it as:
I'm OK with living in a world where being tied to tracks means you might be run over; I'm not OK with a world where standing on a bridge means you might be pushed off it in front of a trolley.
@@Pyedr I agree with you but we live in a world where nobody can stop a train if it's a proposed solution to stop the train it's not a problem of our world and we have to think outside of our view in that world idk if I was in that world I'd jump myself no need to be pushed ^^ I'd be fat for that reason ahah
o.o
You are driving a trolley blindfolded and can't stop, but can switch tracks. Though you don't know the remainder of the dilemma, on one track is a ship where each of its original pieces has been replaced, and on the other is a ship made from the original pieces. One of the ships belongs to Theseus, who will be mad if you destroy his ship. He stands off to the side and controls another trolley which is coming down in the opposite direction. He plans to use that trolley as a kamikaze if you anger him, which you will not survive. Therefore, until observed and a conclusion to Theseus's ship problem can be made, Theseus's ship is a form of Schrodinger's cat, being in a state of will and won't be destroyed simultaneously. There is however, a third track, though once you decide which track to take, you learn the third one would simply run off a cliff and guarantee your death, yet you can still choose to switch to another track. If you switch though and Theseus does too, then that lets on a third trolley full of innocents that wind up on the third track, killing them all. Though Theseus does not know about the third trolley, two sisters on the third trolley can read his mind and knows that Theseus will ultimately do the opposite of whatever either of them predicts, except one always tells the truth and the other always lies. Given an infinite amount of time to decide, can you determine what answer one of the sisters thinks you should do if you could ask one of them a single question?
This is Schrodinger's and Theseus's three-door two-guard cat ship trolley prisoner halting problem.
Mixing all the sodas together
icosagon
The "you don't know the remainder of the dilemma" part kinda prevents acting. Without that though, you should ask the sister what her sister would say Theseus would do if we switched (main) tracks.
If she answers "he will not switch", that means either she lies and her sister predicts he would, or, she speaks the truth and her sister would lie knowing that he would. Therefore the other track must contain Theseus, and we should stay our course to hit an empty ship.
If however she answers "he will switch", then by the same logic, this track must contain Theseus and so we should switch to the other track. Since Theseus would do the opposite of the prediction, he will not switch, therefore we again just hit the empty ship and nobody dies.
...I think?
this is brilliant
I want to report this for war crimes
The problem I have with the fatman variation of the problem is threefold:
A) Nobody is sufficiently fat enough to stop a multi-ton vehicle in/on its tracks.
B) If someone were sufficiently fat, there would be nobody who could actually push them effectively.
C) If two people, one sufficiently fat and one sufficiently strong to push someone that heavy exist, then that second person should be able to just stop the trolley themselves.
You are mentally closed
"trolley problem unrealistic"
You should get into youtube politics, your grasp of the obvious is unprecedented
I saw a similar problem in the fatman variation. The fat man wouldn't do anything to stop the trolley at all if it's able to kill those 5 people all lined up together. The fat man would get absolutely destroyed, followed by the 5 people on the track, meaning the fat man's sacrifice was in vein and now 6 innocent lives have been lost.
@@Niko_lai-78I can’t tell of you’re being serious so I’ll just explain anyway: The fatman would 100% stop the train- because that’s how the problem is set up. of course in real life a fat man would not stop the trolley, it’s just a mechanism of explaining the moral question. If you’re going to take the problem at such ridiculous face value, you might as well say pulling the lever wouldn’t do anything because it’s not even hooked up to the train tracks.
The train driver won't see the people on the tracks in time but he will notice the fat man falling and getting run over and stop the train
My personal favorite version of this meme is one called the "Prisoner's Trolley Problemma"
(picture three parallel tracks)
A trolley full of your loved ones is heading down the tracks and will hit another loved one. If you redirect it, it will hit three strangers, but all of your loved ones will be fine. However, there is another person on the other side of the tracks facing the same problem. If you both choose to redirect the trolleys, they will crash in the middle, killing almost everyone.
Ooh thats a spicy crossover!
reminds me of the dark knight. two boats full of people have been loaded with bombs primed to blow. the detonator for the bombs is with the people on the other boat. One boat is full of innocents and the other convicted criminals.
I would pull the lever. I don't understand anyone who wouldn't. What's the point of having loved ones if you wouldn't risk everything to protect them? You're always gambling on other people's intentions just by existing. There is no excuse not to take an active role in the well-being of the people close to you.
@@dairoleon2682 100% agree. have faith that others will do good and don't ever accept responsibility for when they don't.
@@dairoleon2682 The thing is that there's not only one of your loved ones on the track you're going down, there are multiple of your loved ones ON THE TROLLEY. So if both sides choose to redirect it to hit the strangers, both sides are losing their loved ones AND the strangers. That's the thing about the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's a complicated test of social cooperation. The choice with the least casualties to loved ones would be if one side chooses to hit their one loved one and the other side chooses to hit the strangers. But neither side is going to WANT to be the one that hits their one loved one... but both sides choosing to divert means even MORE loss to loved ones. So it's a game of "Who's gonna take a smaller sacrifice so that neither of us has to take a bigger sacrifice?" except with no communication between them
At the end of problem 5 i like how alex said with such confidence and with an almost happy expression on his face that "id allow the train to run over the 5 and then run over the 1" 😂 like hes happy that the people get run over. 😂
Why wouldn't he be, they are all rapist after all.
Technically he should be! He made the right moral decision to minimize suffering!
I thought it was interesting that he never even considered the trauma of the person that pulled the level. It’s true that if they do nothing everyone still dies, but the act of pulling the level means they are killing five people first before the one. The person pulling the level has to live the rest of their life with that. Not saying he was wrong but I believe it’s something to take into consideration.
@@lazaar6341 choosing to do nothing is still a choice.
But the one person in the end would be the one who dies last and and alone. So I would choose him first.
I like to imagine being in the trolley problem then having to explain and your choice afterwards
Didn’t vsauce do this?
I like imagining being in the trolley problem and hoping the guy pulls the lever to kill me
@@darkdjinniumbrage7798 that's dark ngl
@@Ao5pXB thanks I'm not well
Late to the party, but problem 2 is actually interesting from the other angle too. If you are the person at the lever, pulling it before the fat man gets pushed off means you also potentially save the fat man. The person on the bridge could still shove the fat man off to save the 1 person but in pulling the lever early you force them to evaluate one person's life over another person's life while alleviating yourself of having to make that decision.
truee didn't even think of that, assuming the guy on the bridge can tell which tracks the guy switches it too, the more morally correct thing to do is just whoever pushes or pulls the lever the fastest, since hesitating until the other person chooses puts all the responsibility on the other person. The ideal scenario would therefore be that the guy on the bridge pushes the fat guy and the guy on the ground pull the lever at the same time. They both picked the optimal decision at the same moment.
‘Status quo bias’. What a great criticism of Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine. Never heard of this one before. Enjoyed the examples of the trolley problem, some of which were new to me, like the brain in the vat version. As usual, wonderfully presented by Alex.
The situation he’s describing is just the Truman show lol
I think Nozick is full of it. I would enter the machine pretty much immediately. Before he even says "but it will be fake"; you already had me at "better than your current situation."
@@troodon1096 even if its means never seeing your family or friends again?
Obviously the takeaway here is that I need to get really fat. Then I can sacrifice myself to avoid any trolley problems.
A true hero 🫡
i think the biggest issue with claiming the fat-man push is the same as the lever pull is that in the lever-pull scenario, all characters are already ingrained in the scenario regardless of your involvement, and in the scenario where you literally push a non-tied person onto the tracks, you are sure, potentially saving 5, but in doing so you are essentially throwing another bystander, like yourself, into the fray as a sacrifice to do so.
It's interesting to me also because if we assume that simply throwing someone in front of the train will stop it, than we can also assume that we could throw ourselves in front of the train to stop it, making it so that the single sacrifice is a willing one.
My thoughts always run along these lines: In the case of the lever, you are the only one who can choose, even if you can communicate with the people on the track, you're the only one who can act in the last second. If, however, you're in a position to push the fat man off the bridge, surely he is also in a position to jump. In the former, you are the only possible actor, however in the latter, by acting, you deny another who has more stake in the issue the chance to act, or not, for himself.
@@terpsidance. I think that’s why he is fat, u are not big enough to derail it.
@@mia-MIA-mia yeah I get the implication but it makes it a poorly constructed thought experiment that relies on too many unknowable variables.
I would argue that the man tied on the branching track is also not ingrained in the scenario. He is tied to train tracks which, if not for your involvement, would be perfectly safe to be tied to. Just as the bridge should be a perfectly safe place to stand on. Meanwhile it is those five that, either due to their own poor decisions or due to their relation to a malicious third party, have ended up on the tracks. And so it is your action to save the firmly involved five that involves these otherwise uninvolved bystanders.
2:52 you could say that by being witness to the situation, you’re already involved and responsible.
"If you choose
not to decide
you still have made a choice"
-- Neil Peart
I'm pretty sure that was Getty Lee that said that.
@@pizzaeater8905makes sense, but Neil actually wrote all the lyrics in Yes
@@pizzaeater8905 I debated this but Neil did write the lyric. I've always listened to Rush for the genius songwriting.
Fair point. I knew the song (somewhat), but I didn't know that fact.
@@benjaminseelig8675 I'm pretty sure that Neil Peart did _not,_ in fact, write all of the lyrics for Yes. Rush, sure, but he wasn't even _in_ Yes, and, y'know, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, and Jon Anderson.
One of the smoothest sponsor clips I've seen, well done, you really caught me off guard
I love how when explaining the trauma you act as though you're not traumatizing yourself
I mean you're one lot of six dead people trauma no matter what in that instance, so, you're a non-variable beyond deciding who dies first.
@@StarshadowMelody wrong, it's because he would enjoy it
@@maimonguy123 💀reminds me of that meme where they explain how you can kill all people
@@StarshadowMelody just leave before the troley hits them?
Also you could also say you shouldn’t put the burden of extra trauma on one individual in exchange for the trauma of others because it’s not fair to let one individual Cary the burden of everyone
My personal favourite variation someone showed me wasn’t even a variation. Its the regular problem, but with a third option that’s worse than the others
1) Don’t flip the lever: 5 people die, but you aren’t the cause for any of those deaths.
2) Flip the lever once (or any odd number of times): 1 person dies, but you’re responsible for their death.
3) Flip the lever BACK (or any even number of times): All 5 people die, but you’re now responsible for ALL their deaths. You could’ve left the lever flipped to save them, but you flipped it again and are now the one who is directly why they die.
My take on the Fatman Problem Vs Trolley problem (for anyone who cares): In a trolley problem, the individual tied to the second track is, even if they are not chosen to die, still “involved” in the calamity at hand. They are bound to the track. Perhaps they have to watch the 5 die for their safety, or maybe they are unaware of what’s happening. They are still a major component of the tragedy and moral dilemma. But the Fatman is as uninvolved you. He’s just a bystander. In fact, he’s even less involved, as he has no one to push to stop the train. He could contemplate suicide to save the others, but that is his separate moral dilemma. For you, to push the Fatman is to involve a previous uninvolved party in the situation, removing all of their agency in the situation. Those on the tracks have no agency. They are at your mercy. The Fatman has agency, and begins as someone who is not a part of the problem. Thus pushing him caries vastly more ethical weight than pulling a lever.
I love this analysis omg. It reminds me of the "variation" where instead of a trolley, a doctor has 5 patients who need different organ transplants and if they don’t get them soon they'll die, there aren't organs available at the moment for their procedures. A healthy patient comes up for a check up and their organs happen to match(? the organs that each of the other patients need. If you sacrificed this one patient to save these 5 lives, would it be morally better than letting this healthy patient live and leave and let the 5 patients die? I always thought that it would be better to not sacrifice the healthy person but wasn't sure about how to explain it, and I think your explanation also applies. The healthy patient is a by-stander, and no one goes to the doctor expecting to die to save other lifes
@@regular_bee this can be further complicated if the healthy patient is suicidal or has family
I've always thought of it as a cause-consequence difference.
In the trolley, saving 5 people causes 1 person to die
In the fatman killing 1 person causes 5 to be saved.
From a numbers standpoint, it's the same. but from an ethical one its not (to me at least)
@@mateoferretto2175 That's also valid. The act of saving lives, with one death as a consequence, is very different ethically than the act of killing someone to save others as a consequence.
@@mateoferretto2175 I think of it more as prioritizing vs acting. You prioritize the 5 people, but it’s a question of how much you’re willing to act. Pushing both the lever and the fat man IS killing somebody, but the question is whether or not to involve the fat man or if you can even justify it in real life.
Your answer to the third problem surprised me a lot. As I understood it, the brain-in-a-tank wouldn't actually die, but just experiencing the feeling of being run over by a train. So I thought the question was, would you rather a person die for real or have another person deal with the trauma of having experienced dying. (The problem could be adapted to having the "real" person being very old and the brain-in-a-tank being very young, thus making them have deal with that trauma for a long time vs. someone who was going to die soonish anyway.) Personally, I'd still pull the lever, but it'd be interesting to know if other people would do the same.
Ofc you pull the lever 😂 the only way out of this is to know a bunch of impossible details such as whether or not the person can deal with the trauma or would have rather died
The problem says that the brain can recreate every single experience including terrible pain and death. I feel like if you simulate death then you die. I mean what else would an experience of dying be?
@@RealElevenTimes dying isn't an experice tho, it's a consequence. The brain will simulate the pain of being run over without the actual consequence of the damage said pain is caused by.
@@ZentoBrinebg Okay, but again the problem says that the brain can experience terrible pain and death. I feel like being run over by a car or in this instance a trolley would fall into the "terrible pain" category.
I think the problem meant that if the brain was damaged enough in the simulation it would die.
This reminds me of the autonomous car problem questionnaire.
Brakes don't work and the car can either swerve or not swerve.
If it swerves, it kills an old person, if it doesn't swerve it kills a young person.
Making the choice based on age is morally wrong and sets an insane precedent akin to national socialist ideology, yet most defend that way of thinking.
17:29 love the pride in his voice announcing to brutally murder six people lmao
It’s not murder if he doesn’t get involved and it couldn’t be prevented
well i mean if they're lawyers...
@@ShastraDugan?
For the fourth problem: You could also just pull one lever, redirecting the trolley to the upper tracks, making you responsible for five deaths and maximizing damadge.
The fourth problem could also be interesting if there was another person operating the second split, so it's either you don't do anything and kill the one person, or you force another person to go through the trolley problem. Plus you can't be certain what they would do, they might not pull the lever, making it so that instead of just the 2 people on the track dying, 5 people who wouldn't even be involved had you not pulled the lever, will die
wait this is actually really good fuck
Thats almost the same as the fat man + lever example, except its lever + lever
Sounds like a prisoners dilemma.
Do you trust the other person enough to make the same choice.
I don't know, the fact that you will force someone to go through the problem makes it easier to choose killing that one person. Doing differently makes you a coward. You force someone to go through the problem you decided to avoid. By choosing not to kill someone you force someone else to do it, or to allow 5 people to die. Feels like you're transferring the burden, but not really.
So you combine the Trolley Problem with the Prisoners Dilemma... do you just love suffering?
The railway geek in me would like to point out that, in the illustration for the trolley problem, the position of the lever indicates that the points are already set for the one person track.
Knowing this:
Presuming the person didn't note this. This person pushed another person off the bridge to stop a train;
Still 1 person died, but their decision lead to which person.
Would you find their action to push or not more or less moral?
Would you find this person more or less responsible for the harm they caused or didn't cause?
@@Unsensitive yes
@@Unsensitive They are an idiot assuming a fat man can stop the trolley. It was a risk they shouldn't have taken whether it worked or not 😅
Interesting twist. Then the actor has either already acted to sacrifice the one or is about to act to save the one at the expense of the five.
I know you probably know this, but that's not really the point. Pushing a fat man in front of the trolley wouldn't stop it with 100% certainty. Depending on the trolley's speed, in problem 5, it could potentially get derailed before making it around the U-turn. But we're to leave these factors out when discussing these problems.
I have been in almost exactly same situation in real life. I was waiting at the Footscray train station, in Melbourne, when three guys came walking on the tracks and one driving a small tractor on the track. They were picking up metal plates and garbage, which were spread along the track. I remember I was looking at this unusual behaviour and was wondering if they knew the time of the express train, which soon would drive through. Meanwhile they had reached the far end of the station, where the track run over a small bridge, at the same time of the train, which came hurdling through. The men all jumped over the bridge rail and the train hit the tractor and was lifted several meters up in the air. Everything was a mess afterwards. I stopped thinking and started acting - looking for injured people. Fortunately the train was empty of any people but the driver. He only got minor injuries. The four workers saved their own lives because they jumped off the small bridge. Everything happened so fast, that I never got to the thought of warning the men on the track. You do not have time to contemplate your moral choices in these kinds of situations. Either you act instinctively or you freeze.
I think most people are aware reality would look different. I always answer that I'd divert the trolley AND push the fat man to save 5, morally speaking, but in real life, the psychological barrier to push someone would be too high, I couldn't do it.
@@resir9807 Personally I say I could flip the switch, but I could never push the fat man. In the first case, someone dies no matter what, in the second case, someone dies no matter what. However, the sacrifice is entirely different. It would be like during a rainstorm, letting a wallet fall in a grate to save 5 others swept away in water, the second scenario with the fat man says you need to kick the wallet in to the grate to save the 5 wallets.
All bound people and the train are part of a closed system. but the fat man doesn't feel like a part of the system, they just happened to be here.
@@10thletter40 I don't think it's anything to do with the structure of the problem, I just think physicallly pushing someone to their death is just not something most of us are psychologically capable of
@@resir9807 For me at least, pushing someone to their death feels a lot more personal than pulling a lever and having someone die. And I think that's the hang up for most people.
I guess it's similar to why shooting someone with a gun is a lot different then stabbing someone. The gun puts distance, both physically and mechanically, between you and the person who is injured or killed (and it's the same with the lever).
@@lazuliartz1296 agreed
One trolley problem I like is one where you see a runaway trolley heading towards a trolley problem scenario, but the lever to switch tracks is really far away and the only way to reach the lever in time is to use a teleporter. But if you use the teleporter, will it still be _you_ pulling the lever?
i hate that question. i think it's incredibly silly to think it wouldnt be you.
Let me know if you enjoyed this, as it can easily become a series!
Definitely make this a series, please.
YESSSSS
We need more philosophical videos like this. Please make a series on philosophical videos with references to philosophical literature like Rationality Rule's Kalam Series with Majesty of reason.
I hate to say it (and I'm happy for critique of it) but this is an argument of God's inaction right here. XD
God's just left with a train lever, and using his infinite compute ability to try and solve it... sadly, it takes longer than infinite time. :P
ye milk us, we are concentend, my brain dopamine +1 "series?" content! philosophy?
i think it work well we get hooked, 1m sub lets go !
random thought ; maybe try doing less high pitch at every last word of sentence, it feel a bit like karen angry inverted GNgngngnn GNnggngn it goes gngngnnGN gngngnGN lolol sorry i thought it was funny
yes, please!!!
I feel like having other people watch death with you would be less traumatic than watching it alone
I disagree, depending on how long the train takes. If it takes only a few seconds, the it doesn't matter the order, they died right after the other. But if it takes time. 5 mins. 10, 15? 30 minutes. However long it takes, 1 person freaking out is just himself and his grief. But 5 people will be freaking out, screaming and crying, and freaking out the OTHERS with them as well, making the fear even worse. The 1 person, could accept their deaths, go quiet, close their eyes, and pretend their going to go to sleep and everything will be ok. But with 5 people, someone is going to be wiggling, screaming and freaking out. There will be no calm, no quiet acceptance. Just pure chaos and madness right up to the death.
Not true really
But even so they all gonna die in the end so it doesn't really matter
I'm killing the 5 before the 1 so he feels a lil special before dying
Dragging people with you doesn't liberate you of your predicament.
@@Jirodyne if it's gonna take 5 mins and you can't untie yourself or the person at the lever untie you then you have more reasons to scream than just the one person dying
I’d say that the amount of trauma each person experiences doesn’t matter if they only experience it for a couple seconds. Now if you make the loop take a week, that’s a good trolley problem right there
If the loop takes a week you can probably untie everyone else from the track, in which case I’m going for the one person.
i like the one that says “you’re the creator of this trolly problem. if the 5 people admit you’re the creator, you set them free. are you evil?”
I feel like you are really asking a different question
@@godgetti perhaps are you evil isn't a prompt, but a genuine question from the narrator
@@RealRalsei what is the genuine answer to such a question?
@@godgetti uh, I mean, the answer is probably yes, given the situation
@@RealRalsei but what if the 5 people ARE evil, does that change the answer to 'no'?
My favorite is the one where superman swoops in and stops the train before we have to make an ethical decision, thus saving us from the hell that is moral philosophy.
But wouldn't that lead to you relying on Superman to save you, thus creating the situation of what to do without him...
@@NoFlu Superman will always come to save us
Imagine, if you will, that you are watching 5 people tied to a trolley track from atop a bridge, helpless to stop this, and then some guy starts giving you a rather forceful back rub.
This sounds like it should be the intro to an Ephemeral Rift video :3
Other good Trolley Problems:
- The Friend Dilemma; 1 person you like vs 5 people you dislike.
- The Quantum Trolley(fate dilemma); the lever is in a super position and you don't know which track it will take unless you intervene.
- The Abraham Lever; The Trolley is headed for 1 person, but you hear what to you is indisputably the voice of God offering you whatever evidence you need to accept their divinity, they tell you to redirect it to kill the 5 people.
- Theoretical Genocide; One one track is one person, on the other is a Tron computer with with the only copy of an entire species of sentient programs. Do you value one of your own vs a species of purely computer originated life forms.
- The Devil You Know; Someone evil, perhaps the literal incarnation of evil, is on the tracks and you can pull the brakes and keep them alive. Or, you can do nothing and let pure evil persist. The catch of doing nothing, something else will fill this vacuum and gain whatever powers the old embodiment of evil had. What they will do with that evil power, you know not.
- The Ol' Swapper-O; This trolley problem was set up by an Dick Dasterdly. You can't untie anyone, cuz he's gots himself a gun. You are allowed to swap two people. Do you switch one person with another to 'optimize' who lives and who dies?
The last one is easy! Put Dick Dastardly in the spot of the one guy and pull the lever.
obviously save the one I know.
don’t touch it.
Nah I don’t touch it.
Genocide it is.
Pure evil is pure evil. it won’t change just because who holds the pure evil trait changes. I do nothing.
Depends on who is on the track, someone I know and/or like? Yes I will save them. None i know and/or like? I do nothing
@@ImperfectVoid8479
2nd: I presume so. I haven't heard of that many one-directional levers
3rd: Presumably there's a good reason, it's God after all
5th: At least we know about this evil and could figure out how to counter it, we won't know about a future evil.
Assuming no consequinces other than trauma for me:
1 keep the one I like
2 move it to 1 person (btw you can just say random, super position is kinda overkill here)
3 as by my beliefs God is omnipotent, to prove it's divinity I ask it to make me omnipotent as well, use ultimate wisdom to assess why do I need to choose 5 people, make my own decision, live happy life forever after
4 Save programs
5 Stop the trolley. It is easier to control known evil
6 Swap Dick Dasterdly with a single person, run him over
@@_dekinci I feel like you’re just avoiding the problem for number 3. It’s not “plus get one superpower!” It’s “water evidence is required”. As in. You KNOW it’s God and the question is, do you pull despite not understanding.
after 2 months with this video being recommended to me almost daily i finally decided to watch it. And i must say i regret nothing. Good stuff mate
Another problem with the experience machine is that it assumes the only factor is "realness" and seems to ignore the fact that we have connections to our world and they would be affected as well, potentially hurting or abandoning those around us in order to experience a better reality for ourselves.
I would argue that taking 'no choice' is itself a choice. You're injected into the scenario from the moment that you're aware of it imo.
That person still isn’t responsible for anyone’s life.
It's the same as neglect
@@idreadFell365 idk about your country but here it's illegal to not provide first-aid when you witness an accident.
it's true that the line of responsibility has to be drawn somewhere though.
we cannot be blamed for not spending every waking second trying to rescue people.
@@holleey that’s sounds totalitarian to me, to jail someone for not doing what you want. While some may not like it, there’s nothing objectively wrong with inaction and no one should feel obligated to do the moral thing. So yeah you don’t live in a free country.
@@idreadFell365 there's no such thing as a free country then. but laws are unrelated to the philosophy of morals in the first place.
My favorite version of the trolley problem is when you see a train going for one person on the tracks, then you switch it to the other rail, and only then do you realize the train is now going to hit 5 people.
The show "The Good Place" also had an excellent solution to the trolley problem, they suggested adding an extra spike attachment to the wheels of the train so it could get all 6 people.
One thing to consider is that to my knowledge, trains do not kill slowly. Instead they vaporize their victims into a red mist. Thus, there is not much real pain. The simulation of a brain would effectively be the same as just turning it off. Alternatively, to a human it is not much different than someone getting Thanos snapped (only much faster, and a bit more red)
I was in a similar situation. I was walking alongside of a train track. There was a switch lever. On one track there was a large weevil that was destined to be killed. On the other track was a smaller weevil.
Obviously, I had to choose the lesser of two weevils.
The lesser of two weevils. Terrific.
I had the exact opposite response to problem 5: I instinctively came at it from the angle that 1 person witnessing 5 deaths and then being left completely alone with that trauma is far worse than 5 people witnessing 1 death, but being able to share that burden, knowing others are struggling with it, and being able to support one another feels far less terrible to me.
I suppose that speaks to the value one places on community and how much sharing trauma with others can ease the burden of it, which will vary greatly from person to person. That said, it would also depend greatly on how much time separates the deaths, whether the remaining victims KNOW they're dying immediately after, and a ton of other factors.
You came 🤨
Same, was looking for a comment like this
The whole time listening to his breakdown of problem 5 rubbed me wrong bc all I could think of was the poor guy being all alone after seeing the other deaths vs a small group with the pain spread among them
I thought about it the exact same way!
by pulling the lever you whould involve yourself in the question too
In real life there are support groups and therapy, plus their friends and family. And just because they all saw it doesn’t mean they will comfort each other, hell they could make it exponentially worse.
I also kind of wonder about this same problem, taking it to extremes. Say you keep adding 1 person to the five. The first time you ask if they would let 5+1 die. Next you ask if they let 6+1 die. Eventually you get to "would they let all of humanity die" and not flip the lever. Since it's a thought experiment, you can even get to the point to where you would let an infinite amount of people die or flip the lever. I dunno. I'm not a philosophy major.
That’s a good point! Morality is way too complicated lol. In most situations, I use a form of utilitarianism to make decisions, and I also think utilitarianism can justify human rights, but there’s a certain point when even the deontologist will violate those rights.
lol Trolly Problem + Heap Problem. Wonder what others could be added.
You definitely would do well in a philosophy class 😎. Well done.
Never did philosophy either.. but I'd think this points to how we weigh the "good" and "bad" factors in real life.
We have our own emotions, knowledge of a situation, assumptions, how it will affect us personally vs others, etc
One of the beauties of the trolley problem is it cleans up much of that mess, for clarity purposes.
Bringing back in specific "messiness" to the process would allow for an even deeper understanding of one self and others.
I think most people can't divorce the moral question from the pragmatic one. Most people don't want to go to prison for killing someone, so if in doubt they'd most likely just leave it alone - especially in the case where you're pushing someone onto railway tracks in an attempt to stop a train.
I can just imagine explaining that to the authorities. _"Please explain why you pushed a man in front of that train to die with the other five people"_
_"I thought a man might stop a train..."_
That VPN segue was the most iconic/dad-joke-style segue I've ever seen.
The real question is who keeps putting people on the rail?
I think it’s a mind in a vat.
@@JustinSailor thx Obama
Fr maybe we could just put a stop to them instead of worrying about the levers lol
I love how the trolly problems became less likely, more ridiculous and ever more fascinating. That's my jam!
This was both insightful and hilarious. Stuff like this is why I love philosophy! Please turn it into a series
Muhammad was a pedophile ☪️
th-cam.com/video/Ue9K05Mruf0/w-d-xo.html
My answer to this question would be to pull out an anti-tank missile and blast the trolley into a pile of Thanos dust. Sure it would kill more people but it would beat the shit out of the question.
I think the fact that it is more obvious that "pulling the lever" will "solve" the problem, compared to "pushing someone in front of the trolley" plays a part in the longer thinking time.
You kind of have to figure out if it actually is the same problem first (in reality, it seems unlikely that pushing someone in front of a trolley would actually stop it), but since it's part of the problem definition, you have to accept it. You have to image that you are part of the scenario, and pretend that you somehow _know_ that pushing the man will save the others.
Thank you. Problem 5 finally found that point where I felt that just not getting involved and letting fate play out was really the only option there.
@@mon4d
I'd argue that inaction can be just as wrong as action. If you were to witness someone who is heavily injured on the sidewalk, begging for help while you do nothing and just watch them bleed to death, then you are at least partially responsible if this person dies. In the trolley dilemma, it would be a more complicated situation with more angles, but you'd still refuse to help people in need. It would still be an action that you could be held accounteable for. Whoever you chose to die, you are responsible for it. The moment you realise that you can save any of them, you're gonna be responsible for someone's death.
About not understanding the situation exactly; In real life, this would propably be true, since the controls for railway tracks and the means to supervise them are propably not that intuitive. But in the though experiment, we do know the outcomes and we know how to control which one takes place. We understand the whole experiment clearly, so we understand the situation clearly.
This was both hilarious and thought provoking. How has it taken this long for TH-cam to show me this channel?
On one hand, this is fascinating and I can rationally comprehend most of this.
On the other hand, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
My favorite is a Factorio one; "Your friend is standing on the tracks in the path of an iron train. You can pull the lever to have the train miss your friend, but it will reduce your total iron throughput per minute by 6%. Do you pull the lever?"
When you mentioned the Experience Machine, I had a thought as to why people would prefer not to be in it generally. It's about being able to control your own experience, rather than it being "real" or not. If you know you're going into a machine, you instinctively have a slight distrust in an object (the machine) never failing or of it taking your self-control away, and you'll quickly start to think of rationalisations for that feeling. I think if you can't intuitively sense (or assume) the consequences, there's doubt about safety.
Similarly, with the big man on the bridge. Even if you know you can push him off and the trolley stops, you still vaguely foresee more consequences within and after that than pulling the lever, and you instinctively want to avoid them. It's only by abstracting the question so there are no perceived later consequences that the more rational option resolves easily, and you can only do that by intentionally thinking of it that way, taking longer.
(I just wanted to write this down while I thought of it.)
Which is interesting, because I never thought about the possibility that this experience machine could fail, and until you mentioned it I thought to myself that I would happily go into the machine. But if we take into account that this machine has the possibility of breaking down, then yeah there's no way I'd choose it because it would suck to have a decade inside the machine of bliss, and then get booted back into reality where I'm now probably even worse off than before from not doing anything or maintaining relationships for a decade.
This is accurate and taking into account wider consequences of the actions is often the only way to solve the problem.
However there is an insidious trap in doing that. Mistaking possibility for probability.
Just because machines can fail does not mean this particular machine has even a slight chance of failure. Unless you have data to actually calculate a probability of occurrence then the possibility should not be a major deciding factor unless the possibility has a result of an existential threat variety.
Of course the first action should be to gather more information to be able to calculate a probability but we are talking if for some reason you must make a choice with insufficient time or resources to do that.
On top of this the illusion of control often warps what we thing the probability is rather than us focusing on the probability as it was calculated. Think for instance about the chance of a car accident. It's quite high yet we all get in cars on a daily basis. There is an illusion that we are in control of the car therefore we aren't at risk but in reality you have no control over other drivers, mechanical failures, freak accidents.
Instead the logical thing to do would be to weigh the risk vs the reward and make a decision based on calculated net gain. So if the machine's chance of failure is identical to the chance of getting in a car crash it shouldn't matter to anyone who gets in a car daily that it could fail. However it will matter still to most people because it lacks that illusion of control.
When you take this though pattern to an extreme you end up refusing to ever risk suffering for a chance at a better life which on a societal level means society never tries to fix its problems.
Given the high percentage of people that take recreationally drugs to alter their consciousness I would guess that quite a lot of people would go into the machine.
I don't believe you have more control over your circumstances and emotions in "real" life than in a simulated world anyway.
Experience machine == Startrek Holodeck.
People seem to enjoy said holodeck a lot
I would program a sex orgy with 5 Playboy pets
and never leave the machine again.
My all-time favourite would be the one where we have an infinte amount of people on either track, but the first track places each one at intervals of integer numbers whilst the seccond one places them each time twice as close. Anyway there will be an infinite number of victima, you can only choose how frecuently they would be diying
K that's pretty good
easy, less frequent. The vast majority of these infinite people will be able to live out their days undisturbed by the train still travelling towards them. It's actually kind of like life, everybody has to die sometime. If we can double every bodies life that would be insane progress
@@ToppledTurtle834 What's the point of living if you're tied down to the train tracks?
Ok but if they live longer they just have trauma for longer
What fucked up mathematician came up with that one? Either way, the trolly will stop at some point, they aren’t designed for running people over, after all.
11:00 I think another important aspect as to why people prefer the real experiences is that the knowledge of interacting with real people is really important, because even if you interact with them through a simulated mean (like the matrix), you are still able to positively impact the experience of others, while the experience machine could be complete bliss, but you'd never be able to help another, even if you thought you did
You’re in an experience machine right now. WAKE UP, PLEASE, WE MISS YOU. PLEASE, JUST WAKE UP
@@lifealchemy1218 5 more minutes 😴
@@DeathnoteBB lmao
With regards to injecting yourself into the situation and so becoming a part of it, if you are there and having to decide what you are or are not going to do, you're already a part of it. Even your inaction makes you a part. In the same sense as just standing by and watching as someone drowns when you could have saved them.
I think the brain in a vat thought experiment (not the trolley problem) also assumes that the person lives a fairly tolerable life. I think if you asked someone in an iron lung if they would like to be put in the machine, they would most likely say yes. I think there's a line somewhere where beyond a certain point of suffering in someone's life most people would like to be put in the machine, but it'd be hard to identify where the line is.
This was awesome. I never really got in touch with ethics/philosophy outside of school (though i liked the subject), so seeing someone so professional and with such attention to detail like you discuss these types of questions, and looking at it with more perspectives and possible solutions, without trying to find THE answer is so enjoyable! Great video
This was genuinely entertaining and informative. A very sharp combination that's rare to come across. Amazing video.
12:07 even if the person was aware where they were not actually there, I'd still not pull the lever, because the dead person won't know after they're dead, but the computer brain thingy will carry that trauma and pain of being run over by a train.
The ones that I find most interesting also is when the people's attached to the trail are specific persons. Like a kid, a relative.
With the track loop problem, you didn't consider the trauma of the person deciding who is to die. That person could live for many years with the guilt of their decision.
He saw 6 people die, what order they died in is irrelevant
@@Aikano9 there is a difference between being a bystander and participating
@@angrytigger83 Well in this case letting 5 people die first would involve doing nothing, so it's still the best option.
@@Aikano9 not if you dont touch the lever and walk away
Or their guilt over their inability to decide. Or their guilt over merely surviving where others did not, despite their inability to save anyone.
That ad transition was genuinely one of the best I've ever seen. I legit thought it was another trolley problem at first
If you think (at 3:20) that the Trolley Problem is a "subtle critique of utilitarianism," then you clearly don't understand the Trolley Problem. That's because it's an EXPLICIT critique of utilitarianism. That was Thompson's point in devising the problem, and she wasn't subtle about it at all. It's supposed to be a difficult problem for the utilitarian who thinks that the moral outcome is always the one that results in the greatest amount of utility. But then maybe that explains why you likewise don't understand Nozick's Experience Machine, which is ALSO an explicit critique of utilitarianism.
Rober Nozicks experience machine is a utilitarian critque of ethical hedonism, just so youre aware.
I agree with the rest of the anove statement tho
Genuinely I think the implausibility of one fat dude somehow being able to stop a runaway trolley also affects peoples answers. I know that you're supposed to just take for granted that it will, but *instinctively* it feels like it wouldn't work, and that plants another seed of doubt
The person that made that variant is living in a weird fat phobic cartoon ...
6:30 it seems obvious to me why there is a difference in the fat man or lever scenario and I do not think this is not just emotional. The fat man can make his own choice in this matter. That makes an insanely huge difference. When you are at the lever, you and only you have control. You and only you have to make a decision. The fat man is also not involved (like you he is just a bystander) in the first place. With the switch situation, all people are already involved.
What makes both very different is also the fact that there is a scenario where the fat man would not end up stopping the train. It would kill the fat man and everyone on the rails. Not only did you not save everyone. Now you are also a well-intentioned murderer. This problem does not exist in the case of the lever.
In other words. With the switch situation, you have to make a choice to involve yourself. In the fat man situation, you have to make a choice to involve yourself and the fat man. Things can also go wrong in more ways with the fat man. This in my opinion makes it two completely different scenarios. The only thing that binds them is the fact that the outcome MIGHT be the same.
yeah, when I was considering that scenario, I kept coming back to a place where I had to just assume based on the way the problem was stated that pushing the fat man would 100% work
Aka to shorten it:
With the lever, everyone impacted is already involved in the situation and is in mortal danger.
With the fat man, you involve an innocent person and put them in mortal danger yourself.
Aye - this “meta” removal of choice makes it feel significantly worse if it were to happen. No matter the actual outcome, if the man throws himself off he may be deemed a hero. If you were to push the man, you would be considered, at the very least, a massive dick.
An additional dimension to the problem is the intuition that you will have to explain and be judged for your decision afterwards, by people who may not have the full story and will definitely not be perfectly rational actors.
If someone catches a phone video of you pushing a man off the bridge in front of a train, it doesn't matter whether it was the right choice, you're still going to be ostracized or imprisoned on that basis alone.
When you have to stand in front of the family and loved ones of the person you killed, which do you think will despise you more? The family of the one person who you killed by pulling the lever, or the family of the person you shoved off the fucking bridge? In which case do you think the jury will be more lenient?
I agree. Though even with the best case scenario with the fat man, you are still a murderer anyways, which is why I personally couldn't do it. Assuming that I had time to actually think in both cases, I doubt that I'd even think of the idea of pushing another bystander. And, like you said, that assumes that the trolly would even stop. Sure, in terms of the thought experiment it may be guaranteed, but if I were to insert myself into the situation as best I can, in no way would I even get to that line of thinking. At least with the lever it's a lot more straight forward, and also like you said, you aren't involving someone other than yourself.
Also, even the people you end up saving in case of the fat man problem, I truly doubt that anyone would thank you, which would make sense. Yeah they'd be happy that they lived, but if they saw you push the man they'd be horrified of you and what you done and most likely you'd go to jail. That is unless no one were to see you, of which no one has brought up that part of it. Plus even if I came to the conclusion to push someone, that trauma would be insane. You saved 5 people at the expense of your own sanity, even more so than the lever.
Honestly, I really like your thinking process. Explaining it outloud, I felt my opinion shift a couple times in the same situation but I am more set in the stance than if I didn't take the time to listen. Great content!
I’d argue that when pushing the person off the bridge, you’re involving someone external to the situation. Whereas when you’re pulling the lever the person tied up is perceived to be a part of the situation and already entangled. I think if the person on the bridge was also tied up then more people would push them off, as they’d perceive them in the same way as the singular person tied to the tracks. Trapped in the situation.
There has always been a third solution. If your quick enough you can pull the lever right as the front wheels pass over the fork forcing the back of the trolley into a seperate track breaking the trolley and saving everyone.
Unless there are people on the trolley...
You might want to read about the Kobayashi Maru, originally described in _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan._ You’re given an impossible scenario to see how you handle it; cheating the system says a lot about you, and therefore still makes it a valuable exercise.
2 things,
One. Great video! Although I'm not sure if I agree with everything Alex is saying, there are still so many thought provoking ideas and it is really well delivered as usual.
And two. Thanks for putting the sponsorship at the end of the video so I can at least choose to watch it... Whether that be a morally/ethically good thing to to or not!
That transition into the ad was so smooth
I had a ton of fun reading and replying to the comments the video was very interesting and the comments are perfect this was a very good experience thank you
I came to the same conclusion on the trolley in a loop, but for different reasons. My reasoning was to shorten the duration of the dread of knowing there was a trolley coming for the most people.
I added both alex's reason and this one in my conclusion.
I'm torn on that one for different reasons (both of which stretch the parameters of the thought experiment).
If you kill the one person, you buy yourself some time. Something unexpected *might* then intervene to spare the five (the trolley topples off the track, emergency crews have a chance to block it, etc.), which would be better than the other way around.
However, if you kill the five people, that might be enough to stop the trolley (especially if a fat man can do it on his own). That way you only kill five people instead of six.
Since both options rely on hypotheticals, I'd probably go with the second (kill five), since that's more likely to be effective than delaying in hopes of a miracle.
Isn’t this scenario just an analogy for life? The train of death is coming for us all. Shouldn’t we act in a way that enables more people to live longer lives? I think letting the five die first is equivalent to “life sucks I’m going to drink myself too death”
@@JustinSailor not really. Its not just saving more lives. Its saving more lives by taking other lives which had no reason to die early.
More accurately “life sucks so I’m going to let these five people drink themselves to death other than flipping a switch and it being one”
Basing ethics on intention can be dangerous. In my opinion, ethics are based on the choices we make. We can't choose our emotions or what's motivating us, only our actions. If we started believing that even if someone does a good thing, it's still not ethical unless their intentions were selfless, that would limit the amount of actual good things people do considerably. Even something like donating to charity, many are (at least partly) motivated by the pleasure we get within ourselves for doing it
I had this thought but couldnt come up with the words to articulate it. But you touch on an interesting fact in that true altruism is impossible.
@@icikle and matt and everyone else who thinks like this: what you all imagine as 'an impossible altruism' is actually what i would consider an internal barometer for good action - it usually does signal a deep sense of ease, rightness, goodness within oneself.
_"...that would limit the amount of actual good things people do considerably."_
So? If my dick was twice as long with would be longer than it is now. And then what? That still doesn't show why it's good or better to base ethics in actions and leave intentions out of it entirely than to take the intentions into account as well.
One of the dangers of basing ethics in intentions (too much) that i can think of is that it can and most likely will result in thought policing and in focusing (too much) on what people are thinking and how you can figure that out.
I can't be arsed to back up or discuss why thought policing (yourself or others) is bad, so let's just assume we agree that it is for the sake of the argument.
Anyway, it's not an if question. You require both the action and the intention and judge according to practicality. Also, there's context and behavioural patterns and consequences, so those should also be taken into account.
If there's anything one should take away from this video is that it's utterly stupid to have one view and expect it to work in all situations. It's much better to have all views and simply have a preference and weigh something more than another based on what's practical and/or desired.
For instance, with the deontologist challenge, you'll necessarily shove in some utalitarianism or you'll kill two people. Likewise, if you judge someone on an action, you most likely will be wrong about the effect they have as a person or part of a group. I think you wouldn't mind killing a dog lover if it was Hitler. And even a series of actions might seem perfectly fine until you see the context. Someone's intentions might be great and the next day all of their children are drowned in a bath. You wouldn't call them an evil psychopath unless you don't care one bit about being correct or about consequences perhaps.
Intentions matter a great deal, but it's just not the whole story and the same goes for actions. Actions matter, but it's not the whole story. What if I were to give you great comfort for the rest of your life, and the way I do it is by telling you your broken and you just need to worship my deity and everything will be fine when you die, so you don't need to worry and you just need to remember you're loved by this deity, would that be ethical? Would it be if I sincerely believed that to be true? How will you judge me on my actions?
I think it's tricky because obviously the outcome of one dead person is preferable to the outcome of five dead people, however as Alex said, which one would you rather be friends with? The person who kills one person produces the preferable outcome, but I think there's still a strong argument that they're the worse person. I'm not sure if it's morally "good" to unintentionally save people in the process of hurting fewer people. It produces a preferable outcome, but is it morally good?
Let's consider a different version (which I totally made up on the spot so it may not be a great example). Say I'm someone who happens to be keen on committing murder, and one day I stab a guy to death outside the convenience store to fulfill my murder fantasy. Unbeknownst to me, this particular guy had several loose screws and was actually on his way home to kill his wife and their four children. Thus, by murdering this guy I actually saved five lives, but saving those lives was not my intention. I just wanted to kill someone. Is that a moral choice just because it had a positive outcome? Obviously in the trolley version the person at the lever knows they're saving five by killing one - but does that knowledge make it a good decision even if they weren't taking it into consideration when making their choice?
EDIT: To clarify, what I'm getting at is basically a distinction between a BETTER choice and a MORE MORAL choice. Are they necessarily the same?
To me, it seems immoral to judge someone for something _other_ than their intentions. 🤷♂
I thought this was gonna be a video about the absolutely insane trolley problems like harambe on one side, betty white on the other. I was pleasantly surprised
17:17 Consider this, these 5 people now can form a group therapy session since they all have seen the same event and can relate with each other making the trauma more easy to overcome
I understand that the fat man trolley variant is supposed to exist in philosophical ideals where you know for absolute certain that not only will you be able to push the man onto the track, but that his body will in fact stop the trolley before it can harm anyone else. My hesitation with that version has always come down to those details.
Yeah, like what if you push him but you couldn't do it fast enough and now 6 people died because he was pushed off the bridge after the trolley passed
Imagine pushing a fat guy of a bridge watching him get splattered with the other 5 and trying to explain that to literally anyone why you thought it would work.
@@Printerpenguin it's a hypothetical bro, it's going to stop the train. Thinking anything other than yes or no is just your mind trying to make a workaround the problem so you don't have actively think about it. It's your brain coping over having to choose
@@ragegaze3482not really lol in the hypothetical scenario I would push him every day of the week but in reality there is no guarantee that would for any reason stop a train so there is no real scenario where it makes sense to do so
Ok then, here's another version: the person standing on the bridge with you has a superpower to stop trolleys near them when they die
17:18 I agree with this line of reasoning, but also in this scenario, everybody dies regardless of your actions, so I think that it’s preferable here to not pull the lever, as you won’t be actively deciding the death of a person. If you pull the lever here, the trauma is much higher, and you will have chosen to negatively involve yourself in a situation with an already unchanging outcome.
On the loop one, you also have to consider that by doing nothing you are refusing to be involved and the people die knowing you could do nothing, whereas if you pull the lever you are allowing 5 people to witness you kill that one person first and then forcing them to wait their turn for death.
The thing about the third problem is that once the person actually on the tracks is hit by the trolley, they won’t experience the pain for very long at all. But the person in the simulated reality doesn’t die. They have to live with the mind shattering pain of being hit by the trolley, but still living. Presumably this could happen again and again to them, while each new person tied to the tracks feels the pain and dies only once. In my opinion, considering this, one is morally obligated to not pull the lever and kill the real person every time.
EDIT: I fundamentally misunderstood the actual problem, it is in fact more moral to destroy the computer. I was thinking of a hypothetical problem in which you either send a real or virtual trolley to kill the real or virtual person.
your alternative version is still interesting though! Another version with a twist might be that the computer and the vat are both on the track, so they experience the pain and then actually do die.
I believe that the second you are given the dilemma, you become involved in the situation whether you like it or not, and must take responsibility.
Thats the problem with those scenarios, people dont 'spawn' next to levers, Why i am involved in this scenario in the first place? How i get the knowledge of the lever? I am employee of trolley tracks? i am just passing? Why didnt try to cut the ropes instead? the trolley problem isnt fair or make sense enough to me care, or choose
@@RoyMatzem true but it's not really important for the problem to be super specific and realistic, at least that's how I see it. It's just a way to ask about utilitarianism vs deontology.
I disagree
Alex ! I love your brain and your eloquence and your philosophical consistency - you’ve put me in the same position you were in when you posed your meat eater’s case for veganism - I’m ethically and philosophically completely onboard and am just working towards putting it into practice on a daily basis
Same here. I need to formulate a game plan and try different kinds of vegan dishes so I know what I like.
I went Vegan overnight after thinking on that video. It wasn't the only factor, but it was one of them. I used to eat meat, eggs, and dairy every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. I was also obese, prediabetic, and had low Testosterone.
Now I face none of those vices, and it was extremely easy despite making the switch so suddenly.
If you like Alex's brain so much you should keep it in a vat!
Here's my answers:
Simple explanation of relevant moral system:
- Contractualism with a default assumption of generally maximizing health, happiness, and freedom for the greatest number of people (shortened to "wellbeing"). Note that I'm not necessarily avoiding suffering.
- Bodily autonomy is above all other contracts (meaning, one cannot "use" someone's body without their consent, like in the "bridge" or "doctor" versions of the problem.)
- I consider choosing inaction to hold equal responsibility to choosing action (meaning if both tracks have one person each, pulling the lever is morally identical to choosing not to pull the lever).
Problem one solution:
The lever-puller creates a more moral situation simply because fewer people die. Since no victims state the desire to die by trolley: fewer deaths maximize wellbeing. After this situation, the lever-puller may still be jailed for his action given that their motivations can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (simply as a means of preventing them from killing people on purpose more in the future). Motivation is irrelevant to the morality of a situation under my view: but motivation can be relevant in law situations.
Problem two solution:
Pushing the fat man violates bodily autonomy, forcing a trolley problem onto another person does not. Neither situation is moral, but pushing the fat man is less moral. Optimal solution for morality is still killing the one person on the track.
Problem three solution:
Simulated moral experience do have the same moral value as real experiences. Pulling the lever is the most moral choice in this situation: only because the brain in the vat does not appear to die (we can make them a new computer so they can have experiences/friends again). If the brain in the vat does die: then pulling the lever or not pulling the lever are identical in moral value.
Problem four solution:
Easy for my moral system, you only kill the one person. Double-pull for sure.
Problem five solution:
As you mention, there is likely diminishing returns on trauma in this situation. Killing the 5 first seems more moral. Even if the one victim received 5x the trauma: there's also the effect of time on that trauma to consider. It's unlikely anyone here wants their suffering prolonged and if they must die: they'd rather it be quick. I agree we let this one go without pulling given the limited information we have.