Thought experiments

[qatarperegrine]

I've been having fun debating ethical thought experiments with my friends lately, and I figured I'd share the love right here on LJ.

Here's the first set of scenarios, often called the Runaway Trolley Car experiment. I'll steal the wording given in a BBC article on ethics.

1. A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?


2. The runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track and, aware of the imminent disaster, you decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. Although you will die, the five people will be saved.
   
   Just before your leap, you realise that you are too light to stop the trolley. Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

So here's the major question: was your answer the same for both scenarios? And if not, why not? Can you rationally justify why the scenarios might call for different responses, even though the results (one death or five) are the same in each case?

Comments

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

a. yes, though I'd be tormented about killing that one person

b. I guess the difference is that in a, everyone died the same way - you're only changing the number of equally painful deaths. But pushing someone off SEEMS like a worse death. Plus, there's the obvious pushing a button vs. pushing a person distinction, the latter of which seems much more insidious.

Plus in b, you're discriminating against fat people. Sort of.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I wonder why it seems like a worse death. You mean because he has to endure falling off a bridge as well?

To me that fat man's death seems worse because it seems more unfair than the death of the lone person on the track in scenario 1. He isn't on a railroad track; he's just a random bystander. His life isn't inherently in danger until WE come along and intervene. (Justin says: are you saying that people who walk on railroad tracks deserve what's coming to them? No, obviously.) I don't think that this is a rational reaction to the situation, but it's one of my gut reactions.

Other than that, yes, I think there's a huge difference, emotionally, between pushing a lever and pushing a person. (Research corroborates the idea that people respond much more emotionally to the second scenario than the first.)

[kit-ping.livejournal.com]

Justin says: are you saying that people who walk on railroad tracks deserve what's coming to them?

Someone who is walking on a trolley track has acknowledged and accepted that his future might include being hit by a trolley. The reason it seems less unfair to take out the man on the tracks is that dying that was was a risk he himself had decided to take. By staying on the tracks he has, in an odd way, given a trolley permission to run over him. The man on the bridge hasn't.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I thought too. Justin's point: what if the man on the tracks had KNOWN that the switch was thrown the other way? Then he is not taking a risk.

And isn't a man standing on a footbridge incurring the risk of being pushed off? :-)

(I need to make myself a devil's advocate userpic.....)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

There, that'll do for now. Took me forever to upload the dratted thing -- Photoshop loves to bloat images above LJ's 40K limit!

[lasa.livejournal.com]

That's Screwtape, isn't it?

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're good!

Yes, the image is stolen from the most recent edition of Screwtape.

I was thinking of using a picture of Sweet, the demon from the musical episode of Buffy, but I couldn't find a good screen capture. :-)

[kit-ping.livejournal.com]

If he knows enough about trains to know that the switch was thrown the other way, he knows enough to be aware that emergencies do arise that might cause a train to be shunted onto his track. Plus, lacking camera feed or line of sight, he doesn't know the switch is thrown the other way; he just knows it was when he checked. Change happens. (And if he did have a camera feed or line-of-sight, he'd have been able to get out of the way! :)

A friend of mine has a userpic that's a picture of a pair of beat-up jeans with an angry face spray-painted on them and text that reads, "Uh-oh! Gywn is wearing the CRANKY PANTS again!" I should steal it for debating; the longer I go the more curmudgeonly I end up sounding. :)

[foobart.livejournal.com]

Ok, curmudgeon:

Say the bridge is actually a trolley bridge, and the fat man is standing on a different (at the present instant, unused) trolley track, meaning he is taking the same risk as the single guy in the first example. Does that change your answer?

If not, I think you're inconsistent. If so, I think you're absurd. :)

[kit-ping.livejournal.com]

*reads*

*rereads*

*looks at you*

*goes to get something from the oven*

Here, kid. Have a cookie and be quiet. ;)

[foobart.livejournal.com]

Yum!

[seetarkrun.livejournal.com]

It seems like you're forcing the man on the footbridge to make a sacrifice, where the person standing on the tracks, while making a sacrifice as well, isn't making much more of one than the other five would have. That made more sense in my head, I think.

When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be the one person you love vs. 10 strangers dilemma. I'm very glad it wasn't, because that's not a decision I think I could make...