if you intervene you own the consequences. Who tied these people to the tracks? are they watching me decide? refusing to participate in a rigged game is perfectly rational and moral.
Whatever you gotta tell yourself, but the election happened and votes were counted and now it’s another four years of killing everything. If you didn’t do the one thing that you could do, that’s neither rational nor moral.
I said I understand the argument. You can rage at how the people got on the tracks and look for the real culprits all day, but while you’re ‘solving’ the big problem, people die who didn’t have to.
How about the Blade Runner question: You come across a tortoise on its back, belly baking in the hot sun: do you flip the tortoise on its feet or worry who flipped it on its back while you watch it die?
i would intervene with the tortoise, and i’d happily wear the consequences. I’m not obliged to be a pure witness nor am i bound by any kind of prime directive. I can explain to my conscience why an extra tortoise exists due to my actions but i couldn’t say the same about the trolley problem without extra information.
For example, if i am being observed then my decision becomes data, which carries its own weight and precedent. If the situation was arranged to view my response, then I am obliged to not participate, to send a signal to the experimenters to not tie anyone up on the tracks for future observers. I condemn everyone in front of me to death but how do i know they won’t be killed regardless? whoever arranged the situation obviously didn’t value their lives very highly…
A mentally ill guy who’s mentally ill because his alcoholic father treated him horribly as a kid, and his father was an alcoholic because he lost his job because of the economic recession.
What now?
are they watching me decide?
Why do you care? Does that affect your decision?
There is no “non-rigged” game, this is a very messy world burdened with centuries of unfairness. At some point you’ll have to move on from merely pointing out who’s at fault towards actually trying to fix things.
the trolley problem is the rigged game. It captures none of the important ‘messiness’ of the real world and ultimately is used to help you rationalise voting against your own best interests within a 2-party political paradigm
You barely responded to anything I wrote. The key words seem to correspond, but nothing here actually builds upon the previous comments, it’s either restating things or saying something (as far as I see) unrelated and illogical.
What exactly are my own best interests that I’m supposedly voting against by supposedly voting for Democrats? Why are my best interests crucial here anyway? Could we also take into account the 200 dead Iranian children’s best interests? I think they’re more important than mine, honestly.
You don’t get to choose whether you are in the trolley problem. Once you’re standing in front of the lever, choosing to not intervene is still a choice.
it’s unwise to negotiate with terrorists, and for similar reasons I would say that it is unwise to participate in a system that legitimises your own destruction
You are not responsible for actions which you do not take, and further, you are not responsible for consequences proceeding from actions you did not take.
The trolley problem is designed specifically to illustrate the simple logic of utilitarianism. It allocates no blame to whoever tied the guy to the tracks, and doesn’t usually include any consideration of context. Unlike reality, the trolley problem reduces a qualitative moral decisionmaking to a pure binary, in a complete vacuum. It exists to demonstrate that one number is bigger than another number, with a couple of extra steps. No relationship to reality.
If you have a choice whether you wanted to have it or not, and you choose not to act. That in and of itself is you making a call as to what outcome you prefer. You are therefore responsible.
Choosing not to act is still a choice own it. You would choose to let 5 people die instead of 1 so that you don’t have to feel responsible but you are. You are putting your emotions over the lives of others.
There is such a thing legally speaking as gross negligence. You chose not to act and a worse outcome happens when you had the ability to stop it. Your argument would never hold up in court.
You can try to claim moral superiority all you like but in the end it’s just an excuse to allow you to put your feelings over the lives of others.
As a Canadian I’m am disappointed and disgusted by the selfishness of the US populace both left and right in different ways. Get off your high horse and own your decisions. The time for change is at the grassroots level. Stop with your mememe “morality” and do something beyond the absolute minimum of voting if you even did that.
if you intervene you own the consequences. Who tied these people to the tracks? are they watching me decide? refusing to participate in a rigged game is perfectly rational and moral.
Whatever you gotta tell yourself, but the election happened and votes were counted and now it’s another four years of killing everything. If you didn’t do the one thing that you could do, that’s neither rational nor moral.
I said I understand the argument. You can rage at how the people got on the tracks and look for the real culprits all day, but while you’re ‘solving’ the big problem, people die who didn’t have to.
How about the Blade Runner question: You come across a tortoise on its back, belly baking in the hot sun: do you flip the tortoise on its feet or worry who flipped it on its back while you watch it die?
i would intervene with the tortoise, and i’d happily wear the consequences. I’m not obliged to be a pure witness nor am i bound by any kind of prime directive. I can explain to my conscience why an extra tortoise exists due to my actions but i couldn’t say the same about the trolley problem without extra information.
For example, if i am being observed then my decision becomes data, which carries its own weight and precedent. If the situation was arranged to view my response, then I am obliged to not participate, to send a signal to the experimenters to not tie anyone up on the tracks for future observers. I condemn everyone in front of me to death but how do i know they won’t be killed regardless? whoever arranged the situation obviously didn’t value their lives very highly…
A mentally ill guy who’s mentally ill because his alcoholic father treated him horribly as a kid, and his father was an alcoholic because he lost his job because of the economic recession.
What now?
Why do you care? Does that affect your decision?
There is no “non-rigged” game, this is a very messy world burdened with centuries of unfairness. At some point you’ll have to move on from merely pointing out who’s at fault towards actually trying to fix things.
the trolley problem is the rigged game. It captures none of the important ‘messiness’ of the real world and ultimately is used to help you rationalise voting against your own best interests within a 2-party political paradigm
You barely responded to anything I wrote. The key words seem to correspond, but nothing here actually builds upon the previous comments, it’s either restating things or saying something (as far as I see) unrelated and illogical.
What exactly are my own best interests that I’m supposedly voting against by supposedly voting for Democrats? Why are my best interests crucial here anyway? Could we also take into account the 200 dead Iranian children’s best interests? I think they’re more important than mine, honestly.
You don’t get to choose whether you are in the trolley problem. Once you’re standing in front of the lever, choosing to not intervene is still a choice.
it’s unwise to negotiate with terrorists, and for similar reasons I would say that it is unwise to participate in a system that legitimises your own destruction
If you do nothing, you own the consequences too, even if you try to pretend that you don’t.
And they are much worse consequences. Much worse than the 5:1 ratio of the original trolley problem
You are not responsible for actions which you do not take, and further, you are not responsible for consequences proceeding from actions you did not take.
The trolley problem is designed specifically to illustrate the simple logic of utilitarianism. It allocates no blame to whoever tied the guy to the tracks, and doesn’t usually include any consideration of context. Unlike reality, the trolley problem reduces a qualitative moral decisionmaking to a pure binary, in a complete vacuum. It exists to demonstrate that one number is bigger than another number, with a couple of extra steps. No relationship to reality.
If you have a choice whether you wanted to have it or not, and you choose not to act. That in and of itself is you making a call as to what outcome you prefer. You are therefore responsible.
Choosing not to act is still a choice own it. You would choose to let 5 people die instead of 1 so that you don’t have to feel responsible but you are. You are putting your emotions over the lives of others.
There is such a thing legally speaking as gross negligence. You chose not to act and a worse outcome happens when you had the ability to stop it. Your argument would never hold up in court.
You can try to claim moral superiority all you like but in the end it’s just an excuse to allow you to put your feelings over the lives of others.
As a Canadian I’m am disappointed and disgusted by the selfishness of the US populace both left and right in different ways. Get off your high horse and own your decisions. The time for change is at the grassroots level. Stop with your mememe “morality” and do something beyond the absolute minimum of voting if you even did that.
Fix your shit American sorry not sorry