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Comment by Const-me | Hacker News Reader

“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.

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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!

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