Questions Too Like the Lightning raised for me, part 3

[asakiyume]

We've reached it: Yet Another Asakiyume Rant on the Trolley Problem. When I first committed to writing this, I was all fired up. I was sure I had a totally new and many-splendored rant that would *not* merely be a rehash of my past rants. Now that some time has passed, I ... think I was wrong.

Here's the slim thought that seemed new at the time: trying to find out which of two (or however many) awful options a person will take in a controlled simulation is asking the wrong questions. It's assuming a forgone conclusion (death) and so it asks, which deaths? who dies? But the future is never known, and it's much, much more meaningful to have people exert their energies toward other solutions. "What can be done in this situation?" That's the question to ask--open ended, not an either-or. Letting people imagine deploying secret brakes or giant trolley airbags or robot rescue dirigibles might appear to be an exercise in escapism, but it also might generate actual ideas for ways actual situations could be made safer.

I think the rest of what I'm tempted to say is all stuff I've said before. sovay asked me once whether I thought even just the act of engaging with the trolley scenario in imagination was harmful, and as I recall I equivocated, but coming back to it now, I guess I think yes, if it won't allow for alternative answers, it is. It's a way of compelling people to accede to death and rehearse manslaughter.

Comments

[sonia]

Yeah! I like your new thought.

One of my reactions to the trolley problem is that switching tracks to avoid killing someone who has already chosen to stand on a track is really different from up and pushing someone into the path of a train.

And yes. We don't need more ways to accede to death and rehearse manslaughter. (Thinking about polluting low income neighborhoods, and (lack of) access to expensive healthcare, etc. etc.)

[asakiyume]

That's true about pushing someone. The thing I always disliked about the scenario in which you were asked about pushing someone was that it was always phrased in terms of a very large/fat person, presumably because an average-sized person wouldn't stop a trolley, but frankly, I have my doubts about whether a very large person would stop a trolley ... actually, I know very little about the speed and power of trolleys; I end up thinking about trains, and trains can smash right through cars stalled out on tracks with no problem so they absolutely wouldn't be halted by a sacrificial body. So I always thought the version of the question that asked about pushing someone was (a) fanciful to the point of ridiculousness--tailored to make people have to grapple with the question of whether they'd push someone when really it just wouldn't **ever** be a reasonable thing because it wouldn't accomplish what was being proposed--and (b) fat phobic

[sonia]

Yeah, the fat-phobic part is a horrible (sub)text.

[khiemtran]

My take on the trolley problem is that the "return" of knowing how to act in a situation like that isn't worth the cost of doing the exercise. There are an infinite number of horrible scenarios that could be similarly devised (which of your two children would you eat first, if you were forced to eat one?) and the mental cost of thinking through each one would be enormous. Meanwhile, if you ever were in an actual situation where there were only two terrible choices and no other way out and you had to choose one of the two... then it would be completely reasonable and ethical (and human) to fail to choose anything in the hope that some other solution to appear. Or, for that matter, to panic and choose either choice at random. People could argue you didn't make the ideal choice, but no one could say you didn't make a reasonable one, under the circumstances.

[asakiyume]

EXACTLY AS YOU SAY. I was going to make up a similar example about kids.

And precisely, about the conclusion. Either way, people died and people were saved. We mourn the people who died and are grateful for the people who survived.

[amaebi]

1. I love you.
2. When I was first formally studying game theory, I paused and asked about a game with only terrible outcomes, "Who would play this game? Isn't not playing a choice?" (The instructor said that this excellent question would be addressed later in the class. It wasn't, but I read parts of the text we didn't get to and learned the concept of game value, which I think must have been what he was thinking of.)
3. O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead:
Slain by his servant, going to put out
The other eye of Gloucester.

[asakiyume]

The computer in Wargames is a good teacher. Sometimes the only way to win is not to play.

What raised the question for me in Too Like the Lightning was a scene in which an adult was asking a bunch of kids if there was someone they'd do anything to save. One child says their mother, and the questioning quickly devolves to whether you'd kill for that person, etc. It's not the trolley question, but the scene reveals how harmful and manipulative thought experiments can be. The children don't really have the experience or cognitive skills to resist the way they're being manipulated.

I love you too!

[mallorys_camera]

Who would play this game

THIS. :-)

[sartorias]

Excellent thoughts.

[asakiyume]

khiemtran (upthread) makes an addition which I agree with super-hard.

[sartorias]

Yes, yes. Then added to the anxiety was the fact that in class, you must always choose whatever the professor said was morally right, or you flunked. Even if the reasoning sounded as specious as most philosophy at that time did.

[sartorias]

Oh yeah, so flunking? In addition to adding anxiety about grades, implied that after all, you weren't supposed to think.