Technologos comments on Far & Near / Runaway Trolleys / The Proximity Of (Fat) Strangers - Less Wrong

9 Post author: botogol 23 January 2010 10:13PM

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Comment author: JGWeissman 25 January 2010 11:20:22PM 1 point [-]

I think you missed this part:

This is not to say there aren't real moral dilemmas with the intended tradeoff. It's just that, like with the Prisoner's Dilemma, you need a more convoluted scenario to get the payoff matrix to work out as intended, at which point the situation is a lot less intuitive.

Silas is saying that the Least Convenient World to illustrate this point requires lots of caveats, and is not as simple as the scenario presented.

You can assume that they're not workers and that they didn't consent to any risks.

This is still not inconvenient enough. They are still responsible for being on the track, whether by ignorance or acceptance of the risks.

Comment author: Technologos 26 January 2010 02:20:02AM 1 point [-]

I have a different interpretation of the LCPW here, though. The LCPW is supposed to be the one that isolates the moral quantity of interest--in this case, the decision to push or not, or to switch tracks--and is specifically designed to exclude answers that consider factors (realistic or not) that sidestep the issue.

I'd say the LCPW is one in which nobody will ever hear about the decision, and thus in which any ancillary effects are neutralized.

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