My answer to “The trolley Problem”

[u/EroOfTheEast]

I have this answer ever since learned about the trolly problem, back in high school, but I somehow never discussed this with anyone.

For one, my answer is not based on whether it’s better or worse and people don’t like that idea.

My answer is to not move the trolley.

Here is my reasoning:

It’s not right to take the role of someone to choose who to die or who to live. On that problem, people are bound to die.

Whether I am there or not, the people on the original track will die and the 1 guy on the other track lives.

I don’t have the right to choose who gets to live or die.

[u/Cypher10110]

The trolley problem isn't a problem to be "solved" because there is no objectively right answer.

It's a situation where you can explore different systems for making decisions.

Saying you think that you should not change the direction of the trolley, regardless of the outcome, is an "anti-interventionist" rationale. Anti-interventionism

Which is saying "look, this is an issue between the trolley and all of you, I'm not involved, it isn't for me to say who lives and who dies. Let the chips fall where they may."

Passivity is itself a choice. Even if you choose to frame it as an absence of choice.

It's just as valid as any other reasoned choice. Because the choice itself is meaningless, the reasons behind the choice is what this "thought experiment" has always been about.

Just like every other system for making decisions, it has weaknesses. (In the classic trolley problem, more humans would survive if someone chose to actively intervene). But it also has strengths (the "blame" for deaths should be directed at whoever put the people on the tracks rather than somone who watched in horror unable to actively kill 1 person to save others).

[u/EroOfTheEast → u/Cypher10110]

Oh, intervening is not a problem to me. I'd do anything if it means for the greater good.

The reason why I think this is the supposed "answer" is because I don't think killing 1 in exchange for many is for the greater good. More importantly, human lives should never be on the hands of other human being.

So I don't accept that it's an "anti - interventionist" rationale. The problem removes the possibility of intervention and forces you to play judge on the lives of those in tracks.

I refuse to play the game and kill a person. At the end of the day, whoever set up the trolley takes the blame.

[u/Cypher10110 → u/EroOfTheEast]

You do not appear to be engaging with this on an intellectual level.

"Bombing bad people to save good people isn't worth it because I don't want to bomb anyone" - literally anti-interventionist. But people are dying no matter what you do or don't do.

OK, call it pacifism instead, then. Frame your decision as "I took no action that killed a person, that is more important than saving lives." That is valid but obviously also not perfect. (Spoiler: there are no perfect answers, that is the whole point. You can only make a "correct" answer by making assumptions about what is moral/correct in the first place!)

Would it make the weakness of anti-interventionism more obvious if the first "default" track had 3 people, and the secondary track had zero people? You still are "correct" in not playing the game, tho. Even if it gets 3 people killed.

Pacifism doesn't share that weakness in thst scenario, because actively pulling the lever and "playing the game" but killing zero is still an acceptable outcome.

Like I said. This isn't a game to be solved. It is a thought experiment used to teach students about the basics of ethics and moral decision making.

In reality, it isn't about trolleys and tracks, it is about much more complex matters. Who starves, who gets the fire fighters, who gets military support, who gets medical attention, where does the charity money get spent? Decision making systems are how we plan for crisis management, and how we discuss in democratic settings what would be best for the greater good.

But to understand the difference between a "utilitarian" ideal and a "non-interventionist" ideal, etc, you need to learn about them in a classroom setting. Then, when working with/among/around people and societies that prioritise different ideals, you can navigate and understand better.

Sure. The correct answer is "this town needs better health and safety regulation so that we can stop the trolley and keep people off the tracks!", but the point of the exercise is to learn a different lesson.

Just like math class isn't a lesson about "stay away from numbers they are complicated", it's about learning how to understand them and allow them to be useful in the real world.

[u/EroOfTheEast → u/Cypher10110]

My friend, save the insult, I'm just trying to find way to communicate better.

The reason why I refuse it to be labelled as "anti interventionist" is because it isn't. The trolley problem removes the possibility of intervention by removing a better outcome.

Like your example, why do I have to bomb bad people to save good people. Why can't I just save good people without bombing bad people. I mean I can still held them accountable without taking their lives. I don't think that's anti-interventionist.

Would it make the weakness of anti-interventionism more obvious if the first "default" track had 3 people, and the secondary track had zero people? You still are "correct" in not playing the game, tho. Even if it gets 3 people killed.

You're right about this scenario being anti-interventionism but the point I'm trying to make is I refuse to kill 1 to save 3 people that is bound to die whether I'm there or not. It's the sacrificing of 1 for the sake of many I don't buy.

Like I said. This isn't a game to be solved. It is a thought experiment used to teach students about the basics of ethics and moral decision making.

You're right, the reason why I'm still responding is because I don't think I conveyed the thought well because, well, you labelled it as anti-interventionism even though it's not.

In simple terms, I guess, is that the trolley problem shouldn't have been a moral dilemma in the first place. Your morality should not be affected if the 3 or 4 person dies in the original track just because you can switch the track to kill 1 instead. The moral obligation to save people was remove from you. In fact, it is morally questionable if you choose to kill innocent bystander for the sake of others.

[u/Cypher10110 → u/EroOfTheEast]

I didn't mean for it to be an insult, my bad. It was more meant like: "you are thinking about this far too specifically, rather than thinking about this like an intellectual excersise: which is the real intention of the trolley problem."

It does seem like your last paragraph is demonstrating that you are still "missing the point" of the trolley problem a bit. By taking it too literally and thinking about it on a level that is too personal.

If you choose to use pacifism as a moral imperative, then yes, killing people is bad. And you can use that to justify taking no action. There are lots of other moral imperatives that can also be applied to the trolly problem and its variations. Pacifism doesn't have some kind of "superior" position.

I'll try to make it clear:

The trolley problem is not a test of your personal moral character. No one is judging your answer. There is never an objectively right answer, just many competing subjective answers.

It is designed to be a very simplistic situation that allows you to demonstrate "If you wanted to optimise for X, then you would do Y". Then, you can change various aspects of the simple problem to discuss the difference between various "X" values (moral ideologies).

The point is usually to learn about things like utilitarianism, anti-interventionism, pacifism, consequentialism, etc etc etc.

None of these things are "always right" but having a simple model problem to explain what they prioritise is helpful shorthand.

So when you fixate on "I don't like how this problem forces me to kill people, I choose to do nothing" you are kind of barely skimming the surface of understanding pacifism/anti-interventionism, and you are not really "engaging with the problem on an intellectual level"

(By using it to understand the valuable insights it can give you about other moral systems, like utilitarianism).

You don't need to universally agree with the other moral systems. You probably don't use the same moral framework to decide what to cook for dinner as you do to choose which school to send your kids to... etc

They are simply intellectual tools, and the trolley problem is a basic framework to teach people about them.

[u/EroOfTheEast → u/Cypher10110]

I understand your point and I feel like I took this too personal when I shouldn’t.

I might have took the trolley problem as a literal problem.

It just hits close to home because in our country where many people are okay with killing “bad people” because it makes them feel safer. Some of those are supposedly educated who use the trolly problem as an excuse.

[u/Cypher10110 → u/EroOfTheEast]

The trolley problem isn't an excuse. But it might be a way for someone to attempt to explain what their moral ideology is.

I support pacifism, but I also acknowledge that a country without a military is unlikely going to remain an independent country without one. Because we don't live in a world where 1 moral ideology can solve every problem.

I support anti-interventionism, but acknowledge that a problem that is "nothing to do with me" for now may grow over time and become a much bigger problem that suddenly is also my problem, so early intervention can sometimes be seen as a kind of lesser preventative measure to avoid disaster.

I support utilitarianism, but I acknowledge that any system that assigns an amount of utility to a human life is going to be inhuman and unfair, and an oversimplification, but sometimes when things are exceedingly complex it is useful to attempt to make decisions based on rules that are unambiguous. Consistent rules and decisive action can avoid long drawn-out debates that go nowhere.

I support consequentialism, but aknowledge that our information about the present and our predictive power about the future is always limited, so we cannot fully rely on our predictive models to always give us the best answers to a problem. Sometimes, a fast answer is more relevant than an absolutely accurate one.

This is what it means to engage with a topic on an intellectual level. Every ideology, on some level, has merit. They are useful for different people at different times in different situations.

Somone using a trolley problem to explain "I see this as a trolley problem, and I chose to save more lives." Is likely them simplifying a very complex real world situation into something a child could understand, details are always lost.

It is true that many real-world situations are "bad thing" vs "even worse bad thing", but the real world has more moving parts than simply a yes/no lever. So behaving as if a real situation is totally binary is usually misleading.

[u/EroOfTheEast → u/Cypher10110]

that's very insightful. thank you. I rest my case,

[u/Cypher10110 → u/EroOfTheEast]

Happy I could help!

Philosophy and various types of intellectual "thought experiments" often get a bad/confusing reputation because they get used out of context! It's pretty common for them to be used in an off-hand and clumsy way, tbh.

Other common ones are "the ship of theseus" and the Buddhist Koans of "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

They are all kind of nonsense ideas if you take them totally literally without context, they seem to have very simple answers. This can make philosophical thought seem alien and stupid.

But once you understand how they are intellectual tools to describe quite interesting and important topics about labels, perspective, and consciousness, they are all actually pretty neat!

[u/darkmemory]

The trolley problem doesn't usually start the situation out where a trolley has an option to not move. It tends to preface that the trolley is coming, and you have to choose whether to divert it to a different track or not based on a switch. There are lots of various addons, but if simply not moving the trolley was an answer then most people would just do that because it requires no action and saves lives. Unless you mean you want to stop a moving trolley and kill those found on the trolley already.

[u/EroOfTheEast → u/darkmemory]

You're right, the it doesn't have an option to stop but it gives me the power to "choose" what it kills, 5 or 1.

Maybe there's a confusion with my answer. I accept that the trolley will kill whoever is on the track it goes through. My answer is based on whoever is gonna die whether I'm present or not. In the situation.

I don't want to be the guy that dictates the fate of the perfectly safe individual on the other track if you don't move the trolley track.

[u/darkmemory → u/EroOfTheEast]

Ah, you just meant you won't pull the lever. I mean that's one of the two most common responses. Probably suggests that you have some notion of fate built into your world view, maybe not that extreme, but something close to it.

[u/ApartStandard5248 → u/EroOfTheEast]

But isn't choosing not to move the lever, in a way, making a choice to kill Either 5 or 1.

[u/Illustrious_Scale372]

Will you behave the same when you knew those people And even maybe you know very close Will you not choose. OP

[u/NeedScienceProof]

Government Officials make this decision every day regarding drug approvals, OSHA recommendations, and vehicle safety standards (fewer people would die on the road if we all drove around in tanks at 20 MPH).