It annoys me how people on TV or in movies who have to make tough, unpopular decisions are almost never shown to be right - there always turns out to be a deus ex machina or other third way out. From a spoiler given in another comment here it seems like this is yet another case of that - not that that's surprising when RTD is writing.
Lesswrongers will be encouraged to learn that the Torchwood characters were rationalists to a man and woman - there was little hesitation in agreeing to the 456's demands.
Are you joking? They weren't rationalists, they were selfish. There is a distinction. They were looking after there own asses and those of their families (note that the complicit politicians specifically excluded their own family's children from selection, regardless of 'worth').
children - or units as they were plausibly referred to
What do you mean by 'plausibly'? They were referred t...
Edit: major plot spoiler in this comment.
You miss out a major point of the story, that those who agree to sacrifice others' children are dishonourable, and that this matters; and that the main character, who sacrifices only one child to save all the rest (his grandchild) suffers terribly for this.
I would not argue from fictional evidence, but the storytellers seem keen to point this out. Also, when deciding to sacrifice children, all possible other courses of action must be eliminated first.
Edit: for me, the main interest of the trolley problem is the em...
There have been many similar situations historically - food supply was more or less equal to food demand, so if food supply got suddenly lower for whatever reason, there wasn't enough food for everyone, and some people had to die.
The usual algorithm was that the poor people would be priced out of the food market, until enough of them died to restore Malthusian equilibrium. Most of the dead would be children.
How is that morally different from the situation described in the post?
What if the children sacrificed are the ones who would expected to quickly die anyway? Young cancer patients, for instance, or any chld born with a defect that would have led to a very early death without modern medical care.
Their suffering would be diminished since it wouldn't last as long, and as a dark "plus", their parents were already facing the prospect of the child dying young.
I didn't see the show so I don't know if there was a caveat saying they had to be healthy children. Incidentally did the aliens describe the fate worse than death at all? Is it torture, or more like Borg-assimilation?
"Answer: in a UK-centric political twist they chose those attending the schools with the poorest exam results."
Wait, what? Why not just go with those with the lowest scores period? Why use an indirect test like that (which probably has as much to do with socioeconomic status anyway)?
What a lot of comments (and I was worried that it was all too trivial. Lesson: never underestimate the power of Dr Who) Thanks all.
@Nanani - yes, indeed, the initial round up of 600 or so was composed of waifs and strays like that, inc the ill. But when the demand of 10% was acceded to there wasn't time to handpick
@SharedPhoenix - I agree and a strength of this story was that was no easy way out. The scenario was played out right to the end with the main character forced to make a rational sacrifice. OK, he found a way for it to be jsut one child, but ther...
That's horrible. They should've fought the space monsters in an all out war. Better to die like that than to give up your dignity. I'm surprised they took that route on the show.
It's just possible that some lesswrong readers may be unfamiliar with Torchwood: It's a British sci-fi TV series, a spin-off from the more famous, and very long-running cult show Dr Who.
Two weeks ago Torchwood Series 3 aired. It took the form of a single story arc, over five days, shown in five parts on consecutive nights. What hopefully makes it interesting to rationalist lesswrong readers who are not (yet) Whovians was not only the space monsters (1) but also the show's determined and methodical exploration of an iterated Trolley Problem: in a process familiar to seasoned thought-experimenters the characters were tested with a dilemma followed by a succession of variations of increasing complexity, with their choices ascertained and the implications discussed and reckoned with.
An hypothetical, iterated rationalist dilemma... with space monsters... and monsters a great deal more scary - and messier - than Omega - what's not to like?
So, on the off chance that you missed it, and as a summer diversion from more academic lesswrong fare, I thought a brief description of how a familiar dilemma was handled on popular British TV this month, might be of passing interest (warning: spoilers follow)
The details of the scenario need not concern us too much here (and readers are warned not too expend too much mental energy exploring the various implausibilities, for want of distraction) but suffice to say that the 456, a race of evil aliens, landed on Earth and demanded that a certain number of children be turned over to them to suffer a horrible fate-worse-than-death or else we face the familiar prospects of all out attack and the likely destruction of mankind.
Resistance, it almost goes without saying, was futile.
The problems faced by the team could be roughly sorted into some themes
The Numbers dilemma - is it worth sacrificing any amount of children to save the rest?
The Quality dilemma: does it make any difference which children?
The choice dilemma: how should the sacrifical cohort be chosen?
The limits of human rationality: are there certain 'rational' decisions that are simply too much to expect a human being to be able to make?
Actually despite my jocular tone in the first paragraph I don't want to make too light of this series, as it was disturbing viewing.
Anyway: that being said: rationalist lesswrong community members may want to think dispassionately about the their answers before I reveal the conclusions that Russell T Davies (the writer) came to:
Numbers
Quality
Choice
This was handled by the politicians who considered two dimensions in the selection:
Rationality at the limit
On the question of 'how close' a straightforward evolutionary approach was used. Children of the decision-makers were safe, and grandchildren.
"And our nephews?" "Don't push it".
But the limits of rationality, it seems, are dependent upon gender: While it was recognised that no woman could be expected to agree to the rational sacrifice of her child, it was expected by some that men might have to, and in the end the main character - male - sacrificed a grandchild.
And that's it. Perhaps not a complete disposal of the trolley problem, but nevertheless an interesting excursion into the realms of philosphical dilemmas for a popular drama. Rationalism is a meme - pass it on.