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atucker comments on Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: Vladimir_M 23 August 2011 09:13AM

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Comment author: atucker 23 August 2011 01:32:21PM *  6 points [-]

The differences between the tasks that the different groups choose utilitarianism on seems interesting. It seems like Machiavellians take advantage of weakness more than Psychopaths, while Psychopaths are more okay with choosing who to kill arbitrarily.

Psychopaths choose the utilitarian answer on Trespassers, Hostages, Plane Crash, Prisoners of War, Surgery, and Footbridge the most out of all the groups.

  • Trespassers, Hostages, Plane Crash, and Prisoners of War all involve killing one member of a group that you're a part of in order to save the rest of the group from external forces. Plane Crash has the added difference that the member killed is injured, and it's suggested that he's eaten afterwards.

  • Surgery (the one with the patient you can kill to donate their organs to 5 other patients) and Footbridge (aka Trolley) involve killing individuals in order to same larger numbers of people.

Machiavellians choose the utilitarian answer on Submarine, Bystander, Liferaft, Fume, Spelunkers, and Baby the most out of all the groups

  • Submarine, Liferaft, and Spelunkers involve killing injured individuals in order to save the rest of a group that you're part of.

  • Baby involves smothering a baby in order to have the rest of the group not get heard.

  • Bystander and Fumes both involve flipping a switch to kill an individual rather than a group.

No meaningers choose the utilitarian answer on surgery and footbridge almost as much as psychopaths. Maybe they're more familiar with those questions, and as a result became no-meaningers?