torekp comments on The Problem With Trolley Problems - Less Wrong

11 Post author: lionhearted 23 October 2010 05:14AM

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Comment author: simplicio 24 October 2010 03:09:19AM 3 points [-]
  1. It assumes perfect information about outcomes.
  2. It ignores the global secondary effects that local choices create.
  3. It ignores real human nature - which would be to freeze and be indecisive.
  4. It usually gives you two choices and no alternatives, and in real life, there's always alternatives.

I broadly agree with this, but there's another reason trolley problems are flawed. Namely; it is hard to deconvolute one's judgment of impracticality (a la 4) from one's judgment of moral impermissibility. Pushing a fat guy is just such an implausibly stupid way to stop a trolley, and my intuition is going to keep shouting NO at that problem, no matter how much you verbally specify that I have perfect knowledge it will work.

Comment author: torekp 25 October 2010 12:32:53AM *  1 point [-]

Problem #6: the situations are almost invariably underspecified. (Problem 2 is a special case of this.) The moral judgments elicited depend on features that are not explicit, about which the reader can only make assumptions. Such as, how did the five people get on the tracks? Kidnapped and tied up by Dick Dastardly? Do they work for the railroad (and might they then also be responsible for the maintenance of the trolley)? And so on.

When a researcher uses contrived problems to test people's moral intuitions, it would help to include a free-form question inviting the respondent to say what other information they need to form a moral judgment. That way, the next time the "trolley problem" is trotted out, the researchers will be in a better position to understand which features make a difference to the moral verdicts.

ETA: didn't see MatthewW's similar point until after I replied.

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