Massive psychological experiment in the KSP forums.

[Bill Phil]

Okay. Fine. If we kill one person we have more people. That's an advantage. Not to save them per se, but so the population and humanity as a whole has a greater potential for benefit.

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I would not pull the lever, I wouldn't kill one person to "save" other people", none of the deaths are on my hands.

Human lives are not directly equatable to numeric plot devices.

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This is NOT what is happening however, you have no responsibility in the deaths of those four people, and legally you would NOT be accused of "killing by inaction", there is no precedent anywhere for such an idea.

With one decision you are merely an observer, with the other, a murderer.

And we would all be better off if there were less people willing to pull the lever.

All I'm saying is that either way you're to blame. Beyond that it's the preference of the chooser which person survives.

[Camacha]

The problem:

There are 4 workers in a train line, there is a train coming, the workers can't see the train nor they can be warned about it.

However, there is a lever that if pulled, it will put the train on an alternate train line where is only 1 worker on it.

Maybe a little more background would be interesting. Questions like these (and probably literally this one) are part of what are called trolley problems, pioneered by Philippa Foot. The idea is to ask people to respond to ever more complicated scenario's, from ones with obvious solutions to ones that really have no right outcome.

They are actually rather connected to current developments and technology, as people creating self driving cars will need to implement some kind of artificial morality, so that a truck knows whether to take out that grandma or school bus full of children when push comes to shove.

If anything, they are an interesting way of exploring the morality people always think they have and should be so obviously clear, but often is not.

[_Aramchek_]

Okay. Fine. If we kill one person we have more people. That's an advantage. Not to save them per se, but so the population and humanity as a whole has a greater potential for benefit.

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All I'm saying is that either way you're to blame. Beyond that it's the preference of the chooser which person survives.

But that's not true, you are not "to blame either way", if you don't pull the lever you are guilty of nothing aside from seeing a horrible thing happen, if you do pull the lever, you have killed someone.

And again, the idea that "well four people is better than one person" is a misguided assumption at best.

Lets propose this, the single person standing by themselves is a very talented doctor, responsible for saving dozens of people's lives, one of the four you could "save" is a serial ....../murderer...you don't know any of this...but, you decide to save the four anyway.

The doctor is killed, the ....../murderer go free..hundreds of people are negatively affected/die by your decision.

It's on par with religious zealotry if you ask me, the assumption that ones' own beliefs', in this case the belief that four people are worth more than one, are infallibly correct and should be acted upon regardless.

[Bill Phil]

But that's not true, you are not "to blame either way", if you don't pull the lever you are guilty of nothing aside from seeing a horrible thing happen, if you do pull the lever, you have killed someone.

And again, the idea that "well four people is better than one person" is a misguided assumption at best.

Lets propose this, the single person standing by themselves is a very talented doctor, responsible for saving dozens of people's lives, one of the four you could "save" is a serial ....../murderer...you don't know any of this...but, you decide to save the four anyway.

The doctor is killed, the ....../murderer go free..hundreds of people are negatively affected/die by your decision.

It's on par with religious zealotry if you ask me, the assumption that ones' own beliefs', in this case the belief that four people are worth more than one, are infallibly correct and should be acted upon regardless.

There's no right answer in this situation.

All of their lives are in your hands. You don't pull the lever. You could have. But you didn't. You caused their deaths by not pulling the lever. You're not a bystander, you're right therein the middle.

[Superfluous J]

Pull the lever and then tell everybody you froze and didn't know what to do.

Or if there is some log of when the lever is pulled, pull it, and then say you did so before noticing the train and then froze.

Pulling it back would have made things worse so nobody can blame you for not acting, and the family of the person who died will blame whoever caused the thing in the first place.

i.e., when in doubt, do the right thing and then lie to keep the lawyers away.

[Bill Phil]

Come to think of it...

Is the switch between two or three tracks? If three, I just switch the train to the third. Unless there was something on it...

[_Aramchek_]

There's no right answer in this situation.

All of their lives are in your hands. You don't pull the lever. You could have. But you didn't. You caused their deaths by not pulling the lever. You're not a bystander, you're right therein the middle.

Actually, objectively speaking this is wrong, you didn't cause the death of anyone by doing nothing.

This is a glaring flaw in this "experiment", the assumption that inactivity is in fact activity and that you are responsible for deaths that you merely observed, or rather not a flaw, but rather a forced contrivance.

Objectively speaking it is the wrong thing to do to kill someone, and no wrong is done by observing a thing and choosing not to kill.

So, I disagree completely, the wrong thing to do is to pull the lever and "play god".

[Bill Phil]

Actually, objectively speaking this is wrong, you didn't cause the death of anyone by doing nothing.

This is a glaring flaw in this "experiment", the assumption that inactivity is in fact activity and that you are responsible for deaths that you merely observed, or rather not a flaw, but rather a forced contrivance.

Objectively speaking it is the wrong thing to do to kill someone, and no wrong is done by observing a thing and choosing not to kill.

So, I disagree completely, the wrong thing to do is to pull the lever and "play god".

But you're not just observing. That's not even close. Their lives are in your hands. You are responsible for their deaths. You have the ability to save them, which makes you much more than a bystander observing someone's untimely death. You're the one who chose to let four people die. That makes you responsible for their deaths.

So, do you know what the responsible party is?

[Skyler4856]

Unwillingness to act in this situation is as bad as killing those men...

[jake9039]

I pull the one lever, than pull another that puts the train on an oval route around the 4 workers but also extended past the other workeer, kiling only the pigeon.

[Beowolf]

I stand there recording video as the accident unfolds. Later I'll offer the video to the families of the deceased to use in their lawsuit against the railroad. They had a responsibility not to let people work on active tracks without a warning system.

As for the lever? I'm not a rail worker and don't know what that lever does. What if it diverts the train into a nearby elementary school? What if diverting the train causes a derailment that kills a dozen passengers? It's not like the lever's positions are labelled, "Kill 5 people", "Kill 1 person". If they were, I still wouldn't touch it, but would be sure to get video of it so the railroad'll get charged with murder since it was obviously planned. Plus it's evidence to use in my own mental anguish lawsuit against them.

I get the theory behind the scenario. In an idealized fantasy world, sure I'd pull the lever and choose 1 death over 5. But in the world where I actually live, people get sued for any sort of "helpful" interference. For example, in New Jersey in 2009, a car in the right lane stopped to let a motorcycle pull out. Motorcyclist pulled past the car and proceeded into the left lane, where he got hit. So the cyclist sues the guy who waved him out, because supposedly it was HIS job to check that all lanes were clear. Motorcyclist won, to the tune of $1.5 million.

Screw that stuff!

Edited February 26, 2015 by Beowolf
added link to lawsuit story

[Bill Phil]

That motorcycle thing sounds dumb. My question is, did the cyclist have the right-of-way? If so, blame the laws for right-of-way stuff.