The Cold Logic of Drunk People (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Cold Logic of Drunk People (2014)

theatlantic.com

73 pointsbkraz64 comments

I doubt that people became more utilitarian as they became more drunk. A simpler explanation is the participants answered the questions using the same altered thinking drunk people use to choose their own behavior; They think far less than normal about the social consequences of their actions.

You don't want to flip the trolley switch in part because you feel more likely to be blamed for the outcome, or to be held accountable for making the wrong decision. After drinking a bit of alcohol, it is easier to forget about how others will perceive your actions and instead think about the physical consequences of the actions themselves.

This is, of course, exactly correct and gets at the essence of what always bothered me about the trolley problem. The problem is usually presented with the idea that it offers some insight into how typical human behavior is seemingly at odds with utilitarian concept of the "value" of an individual or groups of human lives. The fact that the switch puller might be subject to some kind of judgement for their actions is typically ignored, but this is almost certainly a huge part of any effective hedonistic calculus that humans may or may not be engaged in.

Not just the social judgment, but also the judgment of your own conscience.

Whether it's rational or not, I'm going to spend less time awake at night for the rest of my life worrying about the multiple people I allowed to get run over by a train than I'm gonna spend worrying about the one person I actively caused to get run over by a train.

Come to think of it, I suppose that heavily discounting the possibility of future regret is also something that drunk people tend to do.

This problem is kinda contrived anyway.

Why would I be sitting in front of that switch? Do I actually know for sure that flipping that switch will have the described outcome? If I'm some sort of passerby who happens to be there, then I certainly wouldn't know that for sure, and I would just be futzing around with railway operations I'm not trained to engage in. I could make matters worse! So it's probably better to leave the switch alone rather than potentially causing even more harm. Try to yell at the people on the tracks to get out of the way, and call it a day.

If you do know operations, and you are at the right place operating machinery you're trained to do; then part of your training may have involved how to deal with this hypothetical situation. So it's probably best to keep on your railway operations hat and defer to your training, rather than putting on your philosopher's hat and think deeply about the implications of your actions.

>So it's probably better to leave the switch alone rather than potentially causing even more harm.

More formally there's two cultural issues that the philosophers more or less refuse to deal with and instead claim inherent biological instinct or whatever.

One is we've been indoctrinated for better or worse with a deference toward specialists via all kinds of morality tales and drama. You shouldn't tell a doctor how to doctor, or a laborer how to labor, according to a zillion dramatic morality tales. Its deeply hardwired into the culture itself. Therefore its culturally wrong to mess with a railway workers switchgear unless you're a railway worker, which you probably are not. You can daydream all you want about possibly knowing how to operate railroad gear, but according to doctrine if you were a railworker, you're supposed to be pretty pissed off if some random member of the general public disrespects your entire field of employment by flipping switches. No matter your real or theoretical employment, we're indoctrinated to leave those switches alone.

The next deeply indoctrinated belief is people are conservative about what they know best. Obviously you know nothing about railway operations, or at least less than the guy assigned to operate that switch. Clearly someone who knows what they're doing set the switch that way for a reason, so if I operate that switch I'm almost certain to be doing something wrong because the guy assigned to it felt he was doing right. In part two of the classic telling, clearly the fat guy knows he's not fat enough to stop the train by lying on the tracks so he didn't jump on them by himself therefore pushing him on the tracks is just going to increase the death toll. The only people who want to upend the cart are actual experts, arrogant, or insane, at least according to cultural myth.

Its possibly in a different culture we'd get totally different results. Maybe in a video game where its "make believe" and not in our culture, you'd get different results. Someone should try these scenarios in minecraft and then compare/contrast results.

It's not supposed to be about railway switches or some concrete scenario, it's a model of a problem designed to gain some understanding about how people make moral decisions. By saying all that, you're refusing to engage with it at all.

The scenario is given to give our brains some concrete situation to think about, because asking 'would kill one to save five' is not something we can apparently relate to. The problem is that the decision making model in my brain, moral or not, is not trained for dealing with life or death situations. So I cannot relate at all, and in the end this test doesn't measure anything useful.

You'll see this behavior in government with far less drastic results. A lot of bureaucratic cruff that builds up is recognized by workers as being such. The government workers do realize just how silly and time consuming the policies are. And many have ideas on how to improve them and speed things up.

But no one wants to do anything because any wrong that happens will then be blamed on them. So if there are 10 issues a day caused by bad policy, and you can change it to only be 5 incidents a day, no one is going to push for changing it because then they would be viewed as responsible for the 5 incidents instead of being viewed as reducing the incident count by 5.

You pull the switch to kill one to save 5, you have now directly acted to kill a person. You are a killer, and while perhaps not legally a murderer, some will still view you as such. That you save 5 is irrelevant.

To see an even strong example of this behavior, consider some action that is even more offensive to the common sensibilities that killing someone, such as certain forms of child abuse. Now imagine a situation where by doing that to one child, you can stop it being done to N others. (Worry not about the details of how such a situations could occur, I'm sure some creative individual could find a back story.)

Now imagine how someone who chooses the utilitarian choice is going to be viewed. Perhaps we should be doing tests not about what the subject would choose, but about how the subject would view another's choices.

>To see an even strong example of this behavior, consider some action that is even more offensive to the common sensibilities that killing someone, such as certain forms of child abuse. Now imagine a situation where by doing that to one child, you can stop it being done to N others. (Worry not about the details of how such a situations could occur, I'm sure some creative individual could find a back story.)

Use this thing: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-231

You can slightly change the context of the problem, and it entirely changes the character of responses:

Imagine you're an accountant working for the government. You choose how medical research funds are spent. One day, you notice that there are two equally expensive programs: Program A, which will save one life next year, and Program B, which could save five lives next year.

Program A is being funded, but Program B isn't. Program B could be funded if you took all of the funding from program A and diverted it.

Do you divert the funds?

> two equally expensive programs: Program A, which will save one life next year, and Program B, which could save five lives next year.

For me, it depends on the chances of "could save five lives" and the cost of the program.

If the chance of "could save 5" is under 20%, no, you don't divert the funds.

If the total expense of the program is over some threshold per life saved, and there is another opportunity, C, elsewhere to expend those funds with a better outcome (more lives saved/extended/improved), you defund both A & B in favor of that other program.

I would expect that probability has already been factored into the numbers at this level of decision.

If you're e.g. making a change to road signage, you wouldn't start out with the total number of KSIs, you'd be looking at the potential reduction in KSIs. Similarly, if you're looking at a medical intervention, you'd be measuring a probability-adjusted delta in QALYs (in the UK).

Yes, I agree that's how it should be done.

The question specifically used certain language for one branch and uncertain language for the other, so I replied to the question as asked rather than strawmanning an answer to a question that wasn't asked.

I think that's because one was a statement of present reality (the program is currently doing this), whereas the other was a hypothetical (if could do this if we funded it).

Thanks. I now see that as a possible reading. I read it only as a statement of uncertainty.

s/could/would/ would have eliminated the ambiguous reading.

Ack, sorry. The two programs are equally likely to save lives, but one is currently funded, and the other isn't. That's the reason for the would/could distinction.

This scenario is slightly different though. It doesn't explicitly preclude the possibility that if funds are diverted to program B, that the one person being saved by program A might also be saved under program B, plus an additional four others.

But there are 2 parts to the thought experiment. This seems just like the "flip the switch" scenario, which most people say they would do.

There is a clear inefficiency in diverting the funds. It takes effort and money to change an already-active process.

What's the cost of switching? What are the respective probabilities of success? What about the possibility that a switch might lead to both projects failing?

Distilling real-life into utilitarianism scenarios is fraught with reductionism - there are many factors that drive people's decisions and those all add up.

More easily explained as: "alcohol shuts down emotions, so the logic is all that remains"

I don't think alcohol shuts down emotions. Anecdotally speaking, alcohol seems to enhance feelings of anger and happiness in certain individuals.

Isn't shutting down emotions the main reason why people drink alcohol in the first place? You get dumped by a girl - you drink. You get fired from the job - you go to a bar for a few shots. Your favorite basketball team loses the match - you get a beer or two. That's why the main part of rehab for alcoholics is learning how to deal with emotions without drinking.

Does an angry drunk seem shut down to you?

You started with `people' in mind en ended up with `alcoholics'. Most people don't end up alcoholic and so don't drink to shut down emotions.

You get married - You celebrate with a party and alcohol

You get promoted - You celebrate by going to a bar to have a few shots

Your favorite basketball team wins a match - you celebrate by getting hammered

I think it's fair to say that many people with emotional problems or mental illness try to use alcohol (or another substance) as a coping mechanism – which is not a good idea.

Most people don't drink to shut down emotions, however.

Some people actually just like the taste of various things.

Some other people enjoy the socialization places like bars and whatnot have.

It sounds like you've learned about drinking habits from TV and not from real life.

Not my experience.

This explanation doesn't seem to fit the drunk driving problem though - it seems that with the level of "drunk driving causes a lot of fatal accidents" knowledge in the world, there would be much less of it, if the above explanation was true.

>You don't want to flip the trolley switch in part because you feel more likely to be blamed for the outcome, or to be held accountable for making the wrong decision. After drinking a bit of alcohol, it is easier to forget about how others will perceive your actions and instead think about the physical consequences of the actions themselves.

That is exactly consequentialist thinking, though. Choosing your actions based on social signalling in life-or-death situations is a really bad idea.

I didn't read the study but whenever you ask these questions, you'd also need to account for the legal implications.

I doubt any court in any country would say "You did the right thing" flipping the switch or pushing that person off the bridge. IOW, you're likelihood for ending up in prison for a good amount of time is much higher.

Furthermore, it's entirely possible that we are even conditioned to say it's wrong to flip the switch because that's how the laws are.

An interesting discussion about this problem and its legal implications is [0] - a dozen or so pages but it will make you think for days about it (read the PDF and not only the wikipedia article)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Exp...

If you were to ask 102 sober people if they would drive whilst under the influence of alcohol, then you would get 102 definite 'no' answers. Okay, some HN person might have some convoluted 'no' and some bored person might throw in some other silly answer, but, generally, you would get 102 'no' answers to this simple question.

Obviously none of this group of 102 would ever drink and then drive whilst under the influence of alcohol, then be silly enough to get caught. That is what you would think if you took the survey results as proof of something. However, maybe not tonight or even some night soon, some of those people will drink and drive, maybe to get caught.

So, if Mr Police Officer stops one of our 102, weaving across the road, driving home drunk, does the drunkard have a) a bundle of feeble excuses and lies or b) a well thought out, coherent reason for driving under the influence? It is a), not b). My point being that 'cold logic' does not apply to 'drunk people' and the best test of that is actual actions, e.g. propensity to drive under the influence, rather than some notional question about would you 'save this baby squirrel or let the holocaust happen?'

Do you define driving after having a glass of wine during a meal as being "under the influence of alcohol"? If so, your position that everyone would answer "no" is severely flawed.

That's the HN convoluted 'no' he was referring to.

Some of those people would only say 'no' because that's the only socially acceptable answer.

If you qualified the question with, "in the desert" a lot of answers would change. I would gladly drive drunk and shoot my guns out the windows if I was sure no harm could come of it.

You'd be alarmed and surprised to find that not nearly as many as 102 people would say no.

The train question has always annoyed me. It's a fantasy world where you kill and save people by pulling a lever. And after the you answer, people add more rules, like "you may have to face jail time if you deliberately kill anyone". What about negligence?

Call me obtuse, but no one could convince me yet that not pulling the lever is the right option. Does it detach you from the problem? No, you still took an option and acted according to it.

Maybe even better, we should look for the sociopath who's trapping people in these train racks for the fun of creating moral dilemmas.

Darkside by Tom Stoppard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkside_%28radio_play%29) is a short radio play that explores this.

It's set to Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. It's all a bit silly but I quite enjoyed it. It's available on Spotify.

It's not a fantasy - you kinda had a similar situation on 9/11 with United 93. In that case, the passengers brought it down before a decision could be made, but in case they didn't, the moral question would be nearly identical.

There's a plane full of people that got hijacked and will definitely be used to cause even more casualties. You know that the people on the plane are going to die anyway. Would you really shut it down just like that?

If you really know, then yes. On those on flight 93 seemed to know. But the other two planes didn't and they didn't do anything. Totally reasonable.

Where I in the hypothetical train scenario, I would not pull the lever. Because in truth, I don't <i>know</i> that the five people will be killed. One of them may look up in time, shout, and all of them scatter. But the one loner? He may be too absorbed in his task.

The details in these kinds of things really matter. They make or break the morality of the scenario. And the details in the train & lever scenario are implausible. The supposed level of certainty is too high.

Yeah, your view here is pretty obtuse. The whole point is to explore the differences in decisions between people, and by saying "no one could convince me of a different decision" is to completely ignore the reason the hypothetical is asked.

In addition to the points already made here, there is a difference between what people say they would do and what they would actually do. This difference may be bigger or smaller for drunk people but in any case, what we learn from a study like this is about how people present themselves, not how they act.

True, but there's some insight to be gained from what people say they think.

Asking drunk people philosophical questions seems to be a pretty promising field of research.

Good luck getting the IRB to approve an experiment where the participant thinks they either killed someone or watched 5 people die.

Also in reality, it would probably depend upon who those people are and factors such as their age, attractiveness, and even protected classes.

Putting philosophical approaches on the scale of drunkenness allows me to consider possibly the most fascinating corollary I can think of this whole experiment, which is to try to deduce the general level of intoxication of the original philosophers while working on their most notable publications.

I would think any question starting with "Would you..." gets more chances of getting a "Yes" as an answer when the person you are asking is drunk, whatever is the question.

How so?

Disinhibition.

“Blood alcohol concentration predicts utilitarian responses in moral dilemmas” — seriously? Blood alcohol concentration correlates to unlawful behavior.

For both dilemmas, a person who won’t touch that switch or won’t push anyone is legally innocent. There’s no way he’ll have to go to the court, while the organizer[s] of those experiments will be charged with a 1st degree murder and found guilty.

OTOH, a person who will switch those rails or push an innocent will be charged with a murder of that 1 person she killed, and I’m seriously doubt any jury will find the suspect not guilty.

Drunk people don’t realize legal consequences of their [in]action. That’s why they conclude saving 5 people justifies killing the 1.

Fwiw, French don't obsess as much as the Americans about the legality of their actions, so I don't think the participants were influenced by the (virtual) likelihood of going to court for their decision.

You don't need to be obsessed about legality of your actions. Not wanting to go to jail is good motivation, at least for sober people.

French penal code 221-1 says “wilful causing of the death of another person is murder. It is punished with thirty years' criminal imprisonment.” 30 years for touching that railway switch is a lot…

There's the theory (you googling the French penal code and its scary max sentences) and practice (me a French guy with 37 years of seeing (as an outsider) what really happens in French courts). In France you don't go in prison, or not that long, when you were faced with an impossible choice.

If the trolley problem happened for real here, whatever your choice, I'm willing to bet you wouldn't go in prison. It's not a 100% bet (I estimate it at 80%), of course I could loose but you wouldn't do more than 5 years. I can't find anything about it in English but if you're willing to Google translate it, look for "Vincent Humbert" for a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

There's a real cultural difference between how the French and the Americans think about the law.

I'd wager that more than 95% of the French population will never see a lawyer through their life.

You'd almost certainly lose that wager though. There are a lot of French lawyers out there! OK, I'm being a bit tongue in cheek, you're talking (I think!) about people actually needing a lawyer, but you know what, those lawyers must be doing something, so I'm thinking that people interact with them a lot. Certainly I know that I personally have three separate friends (ie they don't know each other) that are lawyers, and I definately didn't seek lawyers out amongst my friends!

There are two reasons someone would make the non-utilitarian answer to the questions:

- They wouldn't feel that they could bring them self to cause someone's death (but they could still be utilitarian in principle)

- They feel that it's not the right ethical choice

A well known consequence of consuming alcohol is "dutch courage", becoming bolder and more risk-taking. I suspect the differences seen are actually just the utilitarian-in-principle folk being a bit braver.

Rather than asking:

"people must choose whether they would flip a switch to divert a runaway trolley, killing one person but sparing five others"

They could've asked what they think the correct thing for someone else to do would be.

Or utilitarian people drink more than non utilitarian people!

I'd be interested to know what fields the participants were from and how that changed their answers. Grenoble is pretty STEM heavy college town, ~1/3rd of the population are students.

This part is kind of a deal breaker:

"Duke also recognized that the implications of the study are limited, especially because the sample size is so small. Plus, the questions themselves have flaws."

Another thought: Are utilitarian people more likely to get drunk?

Did this article overlook the recent findings that Alcohol is similar in effects to low doses of Oxytocin and thus influences a 'trust decision'?

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1455/

That was my first thought too. In the article they talk about decreased empathy, but maybe it's social awareness.

I also feel like if I was sober, and that dude walked up to me, I would tell him what I actually think (don't kill the guy). If I was drunk, I would just say whatever I thought was the most amusing, which is clearly the more callous response.

They need to do a randomized experiment. It could be the social environment, it could be the types of people who like to drink a lot are more unfeeling, etc

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