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Comment by ConstantVigil | Hacker News Reader

Kill count: 84

Apparently I solved philosophy? Im gonna assume that title stays the same for everyone lol.

So, explanation for why so high.

Simply put; I don't believe 5 people really got tied to those rails each time. They are in on it somehow. If so, that is sick and twisted they would tie someone else to the rails purposely. So they deserve the trolley instead.

Now on the chance that they really are all innocent; I still have another problem with it.

How did they not overpower the person tying them up? The single person I can understand. Heck 2 people even. 3? 4? 5!?

no.

Something is up. That trolley is going over the 5.

(edit: Like seriously, these people would all have to have been knocked out with some drugged food or something at a party first... And that's assuming they stay asleep, don't struggle, etc...)

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I got an 82, so assume we are thinking similarly.

I am personally interrogating my response to this:

"Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people who tied themselves to the track. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, killing 1 person who accidentally tripped onto the track instead. What do you do?"

I save the 5 over the 1. Only 15% agree with me. Why?

This is the first Absurd Trolley Problem (I think) that explained WHY a person was tied to the track.

I think the value of this hypothetical is in establishing the value of cultural relativism versus Kantian ethics.

In that framing, I'm really surprised that, on Level 27, 70% would rather send a trolley into the future to kill 5 people 100 years from now, instead of 5 people now. In almost 11K votes, this seems significant.

My view is that this provides evidence for the Bentham "hedonic calculus". (And I'm sure there are better scholars of Kant and Bentham than I that can argue for or against this.)

Here's a "political" example: Do you want to deal with problems now, or defer? 70% will defer. (I think this checks out, and is truly hedonic.)

So, I think the data, and the utilitarian approach shows: don't expect any of our societal problems (politically agnostic) to be solved any time soon.

> In that framing, I'm really surprised that, on Level 27, 70% would rather send a trolley into the future to kill 5 people 100 years from now, instead of 5 people now. In almost 11K votes, this seems significant.

RIGHT?!?

I mean, who know's the potential reprecussions that portal might hold for us if we send that trolley through. Sure, 5 people might be saved today; but millions could be saved instead in 100 years when that portal isn't reopening to whoop our ass for killing 5.

I voted to send the trolley into the future, because everything else being equal (5 lives and 5 lives), it gives us 100 years to try and plan for the event.

>A trolley is heading towards 5 people who tied themselves to the track.

My reading of this was that they were suicidal. If people want to kill themselves, that's not for me to decide if that's right, or wrong. But if i can save one person from misfortune, atleast i was ablee to do that.

>70% would rather send a trolley into the future to kill 5 people 100 years from now, instead of 5 people now.

Would you rather have $5 now, or $5 in the future? Humans are compounding, i'd rather pay you in the future when there is more abundance.

> Humans are compounding

I had the same thought, but this isn't necessarily true.

With money, it's true by design. Interest rates, inflation and money expansion are core components of the economy.

However, with humans it all depends on the fertility rate, and it's currently dropping. So in this scenario, there's a lot we don't know about the future.

I sent the trolley into the future because, all else being equal, at least it gives us 100 years to plan for the event.

Eh, I don't really buy the whole fertility rate, depopulation stuff that Elon and the like have been disputing. I truly believe that was him signaling support for abortion ban without him signalling support for it.

One thing has been constant through history, population growth. I have seen no evidence that this is slowing, only that 'Developed nations' are having less kids. People seem to forget that develop nations don't really represent 'the world' as a whole. Southeast asia, India, rural parts of China, South America do not seem to have this problem and they represent that majority of the world as much as the west would like to hide that fact.

Also, we've already proved that artificial womb technology is theoretically possible... it's only a matter of a few generations until thats going to be abused.

Regardless of what Elon is saying, it makes no sense to assume that exponential growth will continue forever. At some point (rather quickly), you run out of resources. Population growth at the global scale has begun to slow down. I don't know when it dips below 2.0 or gets to a stable state of 2.0, but it will eventually happen.

Why not? Exponential growth is all that i see around me. Exponential growth is the universe & all signs point to infinite.

We have an unbelievable amount of resources in our galaxy alone. I don't see anything slowing down in the near future.

>I save the 5 over the 1. Only 15% agree with me. Why?

I saved the one because the 5 presumably want to die anyway.

100 years is a long time for humanity to look into ways to counteract time travelling trolleys! Sure it _says_ the future trolley will kill 5 people, but if I were in that situation I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be so certain. In your "political" example: Do you want a guaranteed bad outcome now, or what we expect to be the same bad outcome later?

Maybe we have medical resurrection in 100 years, so killing people might not be so bad. Plus future humans get a perfectly preserved example of a 100 year old trolley out of the deal, which is presumably a valuable antique.

I got 91 by pressing Do Nothing on every level.

Glad I wasn't the only one doing that.

Not a high total at all. I scored 97.

If there is a hell, I guess I'll be going there.

Wow! Like GP I got only 83. I must have messed up few things here and there!

My rationale was to result to default situations because that's how most of things work. Most of the general events are resulting to average behavior. This makes more sense when you realize world moves without your presence.

So by defaulting, I am ignoring my presence and seeing the result on what happens without me. It was fun decision to make.

In one case, I genuinely saved 5 sentient robots over a human.

There’s also the question of whether you should take responsibility for something that is not your responsibility, unless it es in fact YOU that tied them to the tracks.

I killed 83 and I mostly sided with the majority.

I sometimes also assigned blame to those tied up, or at least agency; they could have prevented this situation, somehow, probably.

One at a time? You have a high level of confidence here that I'm not sure is warranted.

Yeah it says that for everyone.

The trolley situation is just meant to frame the "you have to choose" type decision without starting back and forth "whatabouts" that avoid looking into the actual question like "I simply wouldn't get into such a situation" or similar.

It's impossible to make some scenario 100% of people will find bulletproof so people just use the trolley scenario to convey the concept the question is about the balance of the decision not how the need for the decision came about.

Can't reply to the sibling directly so in reply to it:

The simplicity in the scenarios and the ambiguity of the scenario in this type of question is desired not a fault. The goal is to set up a stage for exploration of that nuance and "shades of gray" space just as you started exploring it in your comment. The goal is not to set up the question in some way that makes it so one of the answers or reasonings is right or appropriate. As such the stats only talk to which lever was pulled, if the question could have all of the reasonings laid out beforehand in a single page then it wouldn't have been a very good trolley type question.

As for talking about the reasoning freeform that's why it was posted here! For your particular example I chose the old people because of QALY. 5*<last 10 years of life> is fewer QALY than 50 years of life starting at a young age. There are probably a half dozen other reasonings I could think of and many more I can't and that's exactly what the goal of the question is, not about actually finding a most correct answer via rigid framing.

I only got 58. Anyone get lower?

I got 55.

Another fan of sentient robots?

If the sentient robots didn't have a good 3-2-1 backup solution, that's their own fault.

They did nothing wrong.

(I still got 65 confirmed kills.)

I got 44.

I got 46...

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