Dustin comments on The Trolley Problem: Dodging moral questions - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Desrtopa 05 December 2010 04:58AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (129)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 December 2010 05:50:05AM *  27 points [-]

Ultimately, when provided with optimally inconvenient and general forms of the dilemma, most of those who rejected the question will continue to make excuses to avoid answering the question on its own terms. They will insist that there must be superior alternatives, that external circumstances will absolve them from having to make a choice, or simply that they have no responsibility to address an artificial moral dilemma.

Of course we do. It would be crazy to answer such a question in a social setting if there is any possibility of avoiding it. Social adversaries will take your answer out of context and spin it to make you look bad. Honesty is not the best policy and answering such questions is nearly universally an irrational decision. Even when the questions are answered the responses should not be considered to have a significant correlation to actual behaviour.

Comment author: Dustin 05 December 2010 10:12:25PM 0 points [-]

Do you have any evidence that the largest negative reaction comes from actually answering the question?

My feeling is that the largest negative social repercussion comes from rejecting the question. However, I'm not positive that I'm not generalizing from my own initial reaction to those who reject the question.

My general feeling is that taking a stance on such questions would be respected by those who I deal with on a day-to-day basis, and dodging the question would be less respected.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 05 December 2010 10:35:42PM 1 point [-]

I respect answering these questions more than dodging them and answer them myself whenever I know the answer (I would pull the switch; I would also push the fat man). I don't have a problem with being candid because most people whose opinions I care about prefer candidness. In one previous discussion with a bunch of non-rationalists who probably don't consider the questions often, there wasn't much dodging.