Thread by @EthicsInBricks

MEGA TROLLEY THREAD

The original trolley problem:

A brakeless trolley nears.

If you don't act, 5 workers (who cannot hear the trolley coming) will die.

If you change its track by pulling a lever, only 1 worker will die and the 5 workers will live.

What should you do?

A variation of the trolley problem:

A brakeless trolley nears.

If you don't act, 5 workers will die.

If you push a big man from an overpass, he will die while stopping and saving the 5 workers on the trolley track.

What should you do?

The trolley problem fallacy:
Perceiving the world as a collection of levers you can pull.

A variation of the trolley problem:

5 people die if they don't receive a different vital organ.

1 healthy person enters with all 5 vital organs functioning.

Is it better to save the 5 by killing the 1?

A trolley nears.

No one is in danger.

You are an ethics teacher.

Should you put people on the trolley tracks in order to keep your job?

Inside the mind of a utilitarian.

"Pulling the lever is murder."
- Your deontologist friend

Tip:
Never EVER let a utilitarian stand behind you on a trolley overpass.

Confronted with a brakeless self-driving car, Bentham regretted his work on utilitarianism.

Teaching ethics & self-driving cars?

Check out:
- Nature paper on The moral machine (nature.com/articles/s4158…)
- Science paper on Social dilemmas (science.sciencemag.org/content/352/62…)
- HBR store teaching case on Autonomous vehicles, AI and responsibility (store.hbr.org/product/audi-a…)

"We are our choices."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

"Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
- Gandalf critiquing the unrealistic assumptions of the trolley problem

"The trolley problem is just one more depressing example of academic philosophers’ obsession with concentrating on selected, artificial examples so as to dodge the stress of looking at real issues."
- Mary Midgley #TheEnd