Random Stuff IV

[Orlion Blight he/him]

https://youtu.be/HDl3iUo__dY

[Zathoth]

Agreed. Every time someone says "No, you can't fish or hunt or gather berries, you can ONLY eat the food from your supplies!" my first question is "Why? Why can I only eat that food? Is everything else on the island poisonous? Is there no vegetation at all? Is this some bizarre island that's made up of poisoned plants and is surrounded by blowfish so unless we have a chef authorized to prepare fugu, we're screwed? WHY IS THERE NO THIRD OPTION, I DEMAND TO KNOW."

 

What's even worse than people deliberately making jokes about the problem and refusing to answer it? NOTHING!!

You gotta understand, when you give someone a specific example that does have a binary choice, the correct answer is not "Well, it's a binary choice, so...nope! Not gonna answer!"

 

>inb4 someone says that exact thing.

 

Edit: Not to be agressive or anything, loopholes are great, but I wanted to have a serious conversation...although admittedly, the train answer if so obvious that it isn't exactly conducive to a serious conversation.

But binary questions are boring DX Like Twi said, you have to explain why it is binary.

It is a lot more fun to find the third option rather than to decide between two boring choices.

 

 

The important question is which group had Sanderson in it? You'll want to avoid that group.

If he has the sense to not loiter on train tracks, which group has the cutest boy/girl that you would like to ask out? And if they say 'no' or 'I'm already spoken for' you can always back the train up...

if you blackmail your way into someones pants you should have been on the tracks.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

If you think about it, all of this loophole exploitation says something profound about humanity: We will exhaust every option available before we make one of two morally repugnant choices. Humanity, by and large, wants to make choices that benefit many, rather than selfish choices that benefit few.

[+Slowswift he/him]

But binary questions are boring DX Like Twi said, you have to explain why it is binary.

It is a lot more fun to find the third option rather than to decide between two boring choices.

if you blackmail your way into someones pants you should have been on the tracks.

See, I find myself empathizing with our dear Kipper. As fascinating as survival scenarios are, for the sake of the argument, assume that for whatever reason you are forced to choose between two, and only two, options. All of this "but why" is probably the main reason I'm not that into philosophy.

Edit: Twi, I see your point and agree, but I still stand by mine. In a hypothetical situation like has been mentioned, I'll say there are only two options. Though I'd love a let's-figure-out-all-the-options discussion.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Slowswift

[Guest]

Okay, let's set up a clear example.

You have a train track.

There is a train going down this track.

There are one hundred people on this train.

If the train continues on its present course, it will go off the rails, assuredly killing the 100 aboard.

You can divert the train.

One track that you can divert it onto has 10 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 10 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

One track that you can divert it onto has 50 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 50 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

You know nothing specific about any of these people. Each group is very diverse, the only difference is the quantity.

 

Option One: You let the train go as it is. 100 people die.

Option Two: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track One, killing 10 people.

Option Three: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track Two, killing 50 people.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Okay, let's set up a clear example.

You have a train track.

There is a train going down this track.

There are one hundred people on this train.

If the train continues on its present course, it will go off the rails, assuredly killing the 100 aboard.

You can divert the train.

One track that you can divert it onto has 10 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 10 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

One track that you can divert it onto has 50 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 50 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

You know nothing specific about any of these people. Each group is very diverse, the only difference is the quantity.

Option One: You let the train go as it is. 100 people die.

Option Two: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track One, killing 10 people.

Option Three: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track Two, killing 50 people.

Why do none of those idiots see the train coming and get out of the way?

[Guest]

Why do none of those idiots see the train coming and get out of the way?

...sigh

Well, there's always debate forums...

[Zathoth]

Why do none of those idiots see the train coming and get out of the way?

The enemy of the evil villain Curly McMustach is a real ladies man. Curly has been up all night tying people to the tracks. Because thats what you do if you are a villain with a curly mustache.

 

So obviously you hit the ten people. Thats not a difficult decision.

 

EDIT: Or maybe you hit the 50 people so that Curly gets more revenge on Macho Heroman. At least you will make Curly happy.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Morzathoth

[Orlion Blight he/him]

It seems implicit in the problem that you are responsible to convey the passengers safely to their destination. If such trust matters to you, option one it's not an option. This would be because your responsibility is the predominate moral here, since it is impossible to avoid killing anyone.

The choice between the other options depends on if the immorality of killing is cumulative (killing 50 is more immoral than killing 10) or acute (killing is just wrong, doesn't matter how little you do it) . In the acute sense, it doesn't matter which option you choose, what you do will end up being immoral. In the cumulative sense, you'd be morally obligated to kill as few people as possible.

And if you apply the Veil of Ignorance, you'd probably choose to run over the ten because at that point, it's a numbers game.

[Guest]

Oh, sorry, didn't mean to imply that your responsibility is to take the passengers to their destination. And as Morzathoth rightly said, killing the ten isn't a hard choice, and in most ethics systems, it would be viewed as the right choice.

But the desert island one is a tad bit more difficult.

[Silverblade5 he/him]

LISTEN TO ME!!! LISTEN!!! THE ONLY TWO OPTIONS ARE KILLING 10 PEOPLE OR KILLING 50 PEOPLE!!! THOSE ARE THE ONLY OPTIONS!!! THE ONLY ONES!!!

 

Edit: Thank you Slowswift.

Yes.

[Guest]

Yes.

YAS

[Silverblade5 he/him]

YAS

Totally accurate answer that is totally helpful.

[Kasimir he/him]

...sigh

Well, there's always debate forums...

Or the dead doc. Where people may or may not be discussing a thought experiment Kas has proposed to test their ethical intuitions.

 

Technically, I would say the Veil of Ignorance is misapplied here. The Veil of Ignorance is a genealogical/heuristic tool used to decide on permissible systems of distributive justice; and to make matters worse, it doesn't even quite tell us about what kind of system we would really end up with, unless you're referring to Rawls' later work. It also serves to ground/provide rational justification for these systems as well as for a conception of 'desert'.

 

The distinction of course being that justice is more distributive and tied to matters of desert, while we're simply interested here in, as Kant charmingly puts it, "the laws of human action." And which action is the better one, or at the very least, the more permissible one, with permissibility being defined loosely as 'Act X may be committed'. (Distinguish this from 'justification' where we claim that Act X is the morally correct thing to do. The reason this is an important distinction is because justification is a stronger claim: sometimes, our moral theories simply don't give us a clear-cut answer and suggest two acts are permissible to varying degrees, but we may not want to claim either is justified.) It would kind of matter here if we considered agent/moral responsibility, but by and large, it's a peripheral issue.

 

...How did I get here again? I was supposed to be trolling Kipper :/

Edited November 13, 2015 by Kasimir

[Delightful]

It also makes a difference if 10 human lives are worth less than 50, which I kind of think is what that comic was getting at. So, what gives you the right to decide that certain people's lives are worth more than others? Your own life should always come first, but beyond that? What gives you the right to decide?

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Okay, let's set up a clear example.

You have a train track.

There is a train going down this track.

There are one hundred people on this train.

If the train continues on its present course, it will go off the rails, assuredly killing the 100 aboard.

You can divert the train.

One track that you can divert it onto has 10 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 10 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

One track that you can divert it onto has 50 people on it. If the train is diverted onto this track, the 50 people will assuredly die, and the train passengers will survive.

You know nothing specific about any of these people. Each group is very diverse, the only difference is the quantity.

 

Option One: You let the train go as it is. 100 people die.

Option Two: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track One, killing 10 people.

Option Three: You make the choice to divert the train onto Track Two, killing 50 people.

Is this supposed to be difficult? #2, and I don't see why anyone else would choose otherwise. 

 

I've always found these interesting, especially in media, like the ferry scene in The Dark Knight. That scene alone is one of my favorites in any movie. Watching both boats deliberate and eventually decide on a course of action simultaneously showed the best and the worst of human nature. 

Edited November 13, 2015 by Mailliw73

[Delightful]

Is this supposed to be difficult? #2, and I don't see why anyone else would choose otherwise.

I've always found these interesting, especially in media, like the ferry scene in The Dark Knight. That scene alone is one of my favorites in any movie. Watching both boats deliberate and eventually decide on a course of action simultaneously showed the best and the worst of human nature.

Say it was reversed though. Track 2 means killing 50, track 3 means killing 10.

I could make the argument that by diverting the train at all, you're saving yourself which I think is most important, plus 100.

If you divert onto track two, you're diverting the train for survival of yourself and 100. Kill 50.

If you then divert onto track 3, you're killing 10, but rather than diverting to save lives, you're now actively choosing who to kill. Therefore maybe you should divert to track two no matter who is on it.

[Young Bard he/him]

I always find ethical puzzles that involve personal involvement (i.e. you are at risk) to be interesting.

 

E.g. (made Option 3'ed proofed just because of Twi.)

You and someone else have been tied down by a nefarious villain. There is an electric charge which is set to go of in 20 seconds into your skull (but not the other persons), killing you instantly. However, the nefarious villain has also given you one untied finger with which you can pull a switch. If you flick the switch, you can make the other person take the electric charge instead.

 

The nefarious villain has had to flee the scene, as you have someone coming to save you, but he will not arrive for 5 minutes, meaning he can only untie whoever's left alive. What do you do?

[Kasimir he/him]

Say it was reversed though. Track 2 means killing 50, track 3 means killing 10.

I could make the argument that by diverting the train at all, you're saving yourself which I think is most important, plus 100.

If you divert onto track two, you're diverting the train for survival of yourself and 100. Kill 50.

If you then divert onto track 3, you're killing 10, but rather than diverting to save lives, you're now actively choosing who to kill. Therefore maybe you should divert to track two no matter who is on it.

Here is my question. Does that matter? Is acting to kill never permissible? Or if it is permissible (e.g. in times of war), then why is it not permissible in this case? Every single choice is a choice about who to kill and who to save. That's the nature of the trolley problem.

But I want to take this a step further and put some pressure on the intuition that it is morally significant to actively decide to kill. I'm going to draw on the work of an ethicist by the name of James Rachels on killing v. letting die. (Well, adapting anyway, because it's been years since I had to do the basic-level philosophy course. Turned into Sanderson fanfiction for your amusement...)

-

[CASE 1] KIPPER is the nephew of an eccentric and wealthy House Lord. He is second in the line of inheritance: his cousin, who is an infant, is poised to inherit all the House Lord has when the House Lord dies. The House Lord is an old man and sickly, and Kipper wants the boxings. So, he hatches a secret plan to drown the infant while giving him a bath, far from the watchful eyes of the servants. He does so: he holds his cousin's head under the water until his cousin drowns, and then claims his inheritance. He never gets caught.

[CASE 2] KIPPER is the nephew of an eccentric and wealthy House Lord. He is second in the line of inheritance: his cousin, who is an infant, is poised to inherit all the House Lord has when the House Lord dies. The House Lord is an old man and sickly, and Kipper wants the boxings. So, he hatches a secret plan to drown the infant while giving him a bath, far from the watchful eyes of the servants. Now, Kipper has formed the plan and intends to act on it the next evening. But that evening, his cousin slips in the bath and begins to drown. As Kipper watches his cousin drown, he realises that what he intended to carry out is playing out before his eyes. So he does nothing. He watches his cousin drown and then claims his inheritance. He never gets caught.

Let us also be clear that if his cousin hadn't slipped that evening, Kipper would have callously murdered his cousin the next evening. He's that kind of guy.

-

I submit that if you think that actively killing is worse than letting die, you would deem Kipper to have behaved more badly in [CASE 1] than in [CASE 2]. Unfortunately, my intuitions* do not agree: I believe that Kipper has acted equally badly in both cases.

*This is a problem of how we do ethics/moral philosophy, and many philosophers are beginning to talk and comment about this kind of methodology, but I don't want to derail us into higher-level issues here.

 

Edit: Brb, going back to learning how to be a welder

 

Edit 2: On the issue of what gives us the right to decide, I'd argue that this word gets the issue wrong. You do not have the right to decide. You have the duty and obligation to decide, stemming from the position you occupy in this situation, and your nature as a moral agent. (For obvious reasons, if it were a dog at the switch, we wouldn't really hold the dog morally accountable...) The distinction here is that on my view, not only must you decide, you must do so in a responsible way. To refuse to decide is morally irresponsible.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Kasimir

[The Honor Spren she/her]

Come on, Cloud? Seriously? We need another sword character? *Is obviously going to download him anyway*

At first I thought you were talking about Winter . . .

[Delightful]

I think your own life always comes first, and actively killing is worse than letting someone die, even if the outcome is the same.

Also I think killing is only ever acceptable in self-defence.

With the trolley problem, I'm drawing a difference between acting to save your life, of which the outcome is that people are killed, vs you've already diverted onto track 2 so you will survive, and if you divert further onto track 3 you are choosing the lives of track 2 people over track 3 people. People dying is no longer a consequence of you saving yourself, it's become an active choice.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Delightful

[Zathoth]

Ah, no, video game stuff, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII is somehow in the new Smash Bros.

[Kasimir he/him]

I think your own life always comes first, and actively killing is worse than letting someone die, even if the outcome is the same.

Also I think killing is only ever acceptable in self-defence.

With the trolley problem, I'm drawing a difference between acting to save your life, of which the outcome is that people are killed, vs you've already diverted onto track 2 so you will survive, and if you divert further onto track 3 you are choosing the lives of track 2 people over track 3 people. People dying is no longer a consequence of you saving yourself, it's become an active choice.

But this presumes, of course, that the doctrine of double effect [=foreseeable negative consequences of a given action are acceptable if you do not undertake the action intending to bring them about] is an acceptable one. It's not to say it can't be done, but it is a notoriously problematic assumption.

 

Edit: Still, I'm gonna back away now, because I should get back to my paper, and for the purposes of it, I'm effectively a utilitarian until it's submitted >.<

Edited November 13, 2015 by Kasimir

[Delightful]

I'm saying that not deciding is morally responsible. You're not G-D, you don't get to decide who lives and who dies when you have a choice of killing 10 vs 50 people. Maybe one of the 10 will find the cure to cancer. Maybe it'll be one of 50. Why should you decide who to kill?

Or maybe you should just ride the train to its death because doing otherwise is choosing who to kill. Choice by being passive.

I was just thinking if someone is holding a gun to your head and says "shoot either person a or person b or I'll shoot you", I think, I'm not deciding who to kill and I would take the bullet. But the train situation feels different and I'm not quite sure why.

Disclaimer, I'm basing my view on what I know of Jewish law/morality.

Edit:

But this presumes, of course, that the doctrine of double effect [=foreseeable negative consequences of a given action are acceptable if you do not undertake the action intending to bring them about] is an acceptable one. It's not to say it can't be done, but it is a notoriously problematic assumption.

What exactly are the problems with it? Edited November 13, 2015 by Delightful

[Kasimir he/him]

I'm saying that not deciding is morally responsible. You're not G-D, you don't get to decide who lives and who dies when you have a choice of killing 10 vs 50 people. Maybe one of the 10 will find the cure to cancer. Maybe it'll be one of 50. Why should you decide who to kill?

Or maybe you should just ride the train to its death because doing otherwise is choosing who to kill. Choice by being passive.

I was just thinking if someone is holding a gun to your head and says "shoot either person a or person b or I'll shoot you", I think, I'm not deciding who to kill and I would take the bullet. But the train situation feels different and I'm not quite sure why.

Disclaimer, I'm basing my view on what I know of Jewish law/morality.

Edit:

What exactly are the problems with it?

I'm not claiming you said not deciding is morally responsible. What I am claiming is that your framing the issue as 'the right to decide' is problematic. My argument for why it is a problematic frame to apply rests on this claim: that I think framing the issue of who to kill/save as one of 'having the right to decide' really obscures the relevant issues, which include my duties and my nature as a moral agent confronted with a situation. [And the reason why I think moral agency is so important to this is because one might just as well ask: 'What gives me the right to decide to help an old woman cross the road? What gives me the right to decide whether a child should starve or die, depending on whether I feed them? We don't ask at all in these circumstances; we simply ask what we should do and this is because we are working from a presumption of moral agency. Our nature as moral agents already dictates that we accept there is a choice for us to be made in these circumstances.] It obscures my responsibilities to my fellow humans. This is why I object to that use of a frame. Clearly, you're not claiming anything about moral responsibility at all because you prefer a rights-based framework.

More or less because it gives you an inconsistency where you are permitted to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman, but at the same time, are not allowed to perform an abortion. There are also worries that it is descriptively inadequate because cases like soldiers throwing themselves on grenades to save their comrades come out as a case in which the soldier does not intend to sacrifice their life--only foresees that their life will end as a consequence of their action. Many philosophers, myself included, consider that a misdescription/mischaracterisation of what is really going on.

 

Edit: Just a warning: guys, please warn me if I'm getting a bit too direct/aggressive. As it may or may not be apparent by now, this is what I do in uni, and we have very different discursive norms in a philosophy class and when conversing among philosophers than in what is probably a friendly forum discussion. So if you think I'm pressing too hard or in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable, just let me know and I'll remember to back off. I'm not always that good at this RL/forum separation, especially when we start going into my area.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Kasimir