An interesting comment. To what extent, do you think, the memes you've mentioned apply mostly to young people, in particular young males? I have the impression that the older generation suffers much less from the "Hold mah beer and watch this" syndrome. This may be because they're just older (which means both that they managed not to kill themselves and that their biochemistry makes them less aggressive and rash), or this may be because it's just a different generation which grew up in different conditions.
I would say that, considering that much of what I've mentioned has to do with a lack of risk aversion, it would be skewed at least somewhat towards young people. But simultaneously and counterintuitively, I would say that it applies to young women more than one would initially suspect; my just-so story for this is that greater society-wide gender equality manifests in the minds of many working-class young women as "Do what the boys are doing because I can now," which amounts to pronking. I've noticed that my sister in the past has done dangerous ...
[CW: This post talks about personal experience of moral dilemmas. I can see how some people might be distressed by thinking about this.]
Have you ever had to decide between pushing a fat person onto some train tracks or letting five other people get hit by a train? Maybe you have a more exciting commute than I do, but for me it's just never come up.
In spite of this, I'm unusually prepared for a trolley problem, in a way I'm not prepared for, say, being offered a high-paying job at an unquantifiably-evil company. Similarly, if a friend asked me to lie to another friend about something important to them, I probably wouldn't carry out a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It seems that I'm happy to adopt consequentialist policy, but when it comes to personal quandaries where I have to decide for myself, I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me. What's more, I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad heuristic in a social context.
It's also noteworthy (to me, at least) that I rarely experience moral dilemmas. They just don't happen all that often. I like to think I have a reasonably coherent moral framework, but do I really need one? Do I just lead a very morally-inert life? Or have abstruse thought experiments in moral philosophy equipped me with broader principles under which would-be moral dilemmas are resolved before they reach my conscious deliberation?
To make sure I'm not giving too much weight to my own experiences, I thought I'd put a few questions to a wider audience:
- What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?
- Do you have any thoughts on how much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life? Do you think this is a typical amount?
- Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?
- Do you have any examples of personal moral dilemmas on a Trolley Problem scale that nonetheless happened?
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