Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Wednesday, December 7. 2011

The trolley dilemma

Would You Kill One Person to Save Five? New Research on a Classic Debate.


Always an interesting topic, but I doubt any study can tell what people would do in the real situation.



Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:31 | Comments (4) | Trackback (1)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

The Art of Choosing
A former intern at my office is now working with this speaker and directed me to this presentation. It's a fascinating discussion of choice. Recently, there was a post on Maggie's about the Runaway Boxcar. How do we approach choice
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Jan 05, 08:02

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I get it - it's a thought experiment. All things being equal, I'd make the decision for one over the five.

But all things are not equal, and that's why this thought experiment runs into a difficulty for me. Who's to say one of the five doesn't see or hear the boxcar coming, and help move the others out of the way quickly?

In the real world, if I was forced to make a determination on what the potential outcome could/might be, I'd opt for scenario two and let nature take its course. The likelyhood of one of five seeing/hearing something and 'saving the day' is far greater than one person (who could be heavily distracted at the moment) catching the problem and saving himself.

This isn't just an analysis of selfishness, or a decision on what is the greater good. It's a statistical framework for potential probabilities.

I can't break down all the potential likelyhoods (1,2,3,4 or all 5 could see it, which means there are 120 scenarios on who may hear/see the boxcar. Only one includes of none of them hearing/seeing anything. That's 119 out of 120 chance of being aware and getting out of the way.

There's a 50/50 chance the single guy sees it and gets out of the way.

Overall, the odds indicate the five are more likely to get out of the way, statistically.
#1 Bulldog on 2011-12-07 15:47 (Reply)
Truman was correct at Hiroshima, maybe not so at Nagasaki. But, to save the (est.) 1million projected casualties, he made the correct call.

I'd nuke a city filled with Nuns and Orphans to save my family and my local community... Blood thirsty, no doubt, but the higher order of priorities trumps all else...
#2 Fred Zeppelin on 2011-12-07 16:03 (Reply)
I'm wondering how often, in the real-life scenarios, the one is sacrificed but the five die anyway, and how often the person proposing to kill the one does not give a tinker's cuss about the five, but merely wants to kill the one for entirely unrelated reasons.
#3 John on 2011-12-08 08:12 (Reply)
these thought experiments always presume perfect foreknowledge of events, something that isn't so in real life, so they are of very limited use beyond the classroom or internet bull sessions.

I can't say who would or would not actually die in the train accident, and neither can anyone else.

but its certain that if you divert a train to a track and someone dies you've committed some form of criminal homicide. whether or not there are mitigating circumstances that might alleviate your punishment is a different issue.

Fred: George MacDonald Fraser, who served in Burma in August '45, makes the same point about Hiroshima in his autobiographical novel, Quartered Safe Out Here.
#4 wirraway on 2011-12-08 13:55 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.