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Comment by mcny | Hacker News Reader

Lets not be too hasty on this. There are over seven (over eight?) billion (with a B) humans. There are fewer than a billion dogs. Pretty sure the answer is clear: prefer saving dog lives over human lives. Now, if it was chicken vs humans, of course, save human lives.

Now take this to another extreme, would you rather save the life of ONE giant panda or one hundred humans? I think all reasonable people will press the button to save the live of one giant panda and kill one hundred humans before you can finish the question.

Edit: Google says there are only 1,864 pandas in the wild with an additional four hundred in captivity. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+giant+pandas+are+th...

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While no less arbitrary, your metric for comparison seems shallow. I had already decided the panda should die before you finished that question, not the other way around.

The panda won’t be missed by many.

> I had already decided the panda should die before you finished that question, not the other way around.

I appreciate replies on HN as they show the flaw in my assumption.

Speaking of assumptions, indulge me for a moment: I kind of find the trolley problem difficult because all legality aside, I feel like if I pull a lever and one person dies, I am responsible for that one death but if I don't pull the lever and n people die, I wouldn't feel as bad. Is there a name for this?

I mean like the idea that if something happens by my action that is worse than if something happens by my failure to act. I mean who am I to choose those n lives over that one life, right?

> Is there a name for this?

It seems to go by negative and positive duties (or rights, or obligations) in the literature.

Choosing not to act is choosing nonetheless. You are responsible in both situations. You didn’t set the events into motion, no — but you had full awareness of the inevitable consequences that would result from acting or not. You must make the choice, therefore, that you can live with. This is the nature of the human experience.

If your argument is that it's clear we should prefer species preservation over all else, then let's take the giant panda example to its logical extreme. Human population (estimated 7,800,000,000) / giant panda population (1,864) = 4,184,549. So all 'reasonable people' would kill 4 million humans before a single giant panda. Is that really the argument here?

Why not? Humans are easily replaced. Pandas, not so much.

I’m being somewhat facetious here.

What if there was just a single panda left? Should we in this case terminate the whole human population down to one last person before killing the panda?

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