this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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How would you apply your reasoning on the trolley problem? I.e. on one track there are two anonymous people and on the other track there is one, the trolley is heading towards the two. Is it unethical to pull the lever to divert it because killing anyone is morally unacceptable?
The trolley problem presupposes a dichotomy which does not exist here.
So if the election only had two candidates and was a dichotomy would it apply?
I'm trying to understand the reasoning here.
Why do you choose to play the trolley problem game? Nobody is forcing you. You're deciding that you want to be complicit either way. Turning your back and walking away from being a party to mass murder is the moral choice. Fighting the system that is telling you that you have to play is heroic.
Another problem with the trolley analogy is that in the case of the idealized thought experiment you have perfect information. You know for sure which choice will lead to less harm. That is not the case in reality. In reality you are dealing with incomplete, imperfect information.
Furthermore, in reality there is always a third choice. Whether that's third party or boycotting the vote, you can still make a choice that is consequential and distinct from the false dichotomy. This is not the case in the trolley problem where no such third option exists.
And lastly, in reality your choice of actions is not limited to the pulling of a lever. What if in the trolley problem your tried to get the people off the tracks? What if you tried throwing something on the track to derail the whole train? What if you worked to sabotage or dismantle the track itself? In other words, direct action.
You just need some courage and imagination to come up with alternative solutions. You don't need to allow yourself to be limited to the lever-track paradigm. If you only have the audacity to think outside the box you can break out of the mental prison of "liberal democracy".
I agree with you on all the ways with which the trolley thought experience falls to reflect reality.
However, the objective isn't really to reflect reality but rather to elucidate the essence of the moral principle being examined.
The principle in this case I struggle to fully understand is OP's idea that there is a threshold of evil beyond which lesser of two evils is morally bankrupt to follow. But why should that be the case when direct action can be combined with voting with no effect? In terms of the trolley problem that would be if you could instantaneously pull the lever while simultaneously attempting to get people off or derail the train or sabotaging the track.
You can do that. You can do that by voting third party or abstaining. As i tried to explain to you, these are also choices. These are also levers that you can pull, you are not forced to choose between pulling the red or the blue lever. Choosing such a third option has the beneficial effect of decreasing the legitimacy of the duopoly. The more people that choose to do this, the less believable the claim will be of whoever wins having a "democratic mandate".
Further, as i have repeatedly tried to explain to you, it is not clear which if any of the two tracks that you think you have to pick from is actually the lesser evil. You axiomatically assume that you know which of those two tracks is less harmful, but you don't.
Because pulling the lever adds legitmancy to the people who tied those people to the rails and made you choose, you agreed to play there game, you particpiated and are culpable.
This is the first response that I think is actually engaging with my question.
My disagreement stems from not seeing that adding of legitimacy as worth as much as actual people's lives that are different in count on the different tracks.
It's okay, I apparently made a faux pas trying to engage to learn here on this issue but this community is clearly more for comradeship like its name suggests rather than outreach. That's fine, I'm going to discontinue this conversation here as my interjections are clearly unwelcome.
You have received a lot of attention and information. What do you expect, for people to bend over backwards to talk to you about this on your terms? What person who takes learning seriously does this? Do you show up to a classroom and leave if the teacher does not re-frame their lecture on physics into the trolley problem? "Outreach" does not mean you change nothing about yourself and everyone else changes what they're doing for you. You could receive the ideal maximum of compassion, patience, and clarity of thought and word, but if you are only willing to approach it on your terms, then no matter what you tell yourself about your intent, the substance of your actions is that of reinforcing what you already believe, not learning.
And I am speaking from some experience here. I did not always have the views that I do and one of the most important things in changing that was doing more listening to people who are better informed. Philosophical questions like the trolley problem gives people a false sense of competence in understanding a given issue; that as long as you can abstract a problem to its component parts, you can overcome any ignorance of it and arrive at the correct position. This is not so. You must understand what is happening correctly, so that you can properly generalize. If your information on the fundamentals is incorrect, attempting to generalize will only obfuscate rather than clarify and give a false sense of confidence in your position.
Every single comment in this thread has fully engaged with your question, your inability to percieve that or your ego getting in the way isnt a failure on there parts, I havent seen one take in this thread I dont agree with. Most of them are poking at the american liberal exceptionalism you're displaying, where you're presenting this topic as a A:B situation.
The most effective way to save those people wouldnt be an induvidual act of pulling the lever, then running to untie the millions of tied down people. Its organizing into a large collective and dealing with the problem at its origin, not at its symptoms.
Break the tracks, save the people as a collective, no empty solutions that continue to perputate the endless cycle of violence.
Not when those two candidates both serve the same interests.
Could you or anyone convert the scenario then into a trolley problem that does fit in your view?
Yes. There are ninety nine people on one side of the fork in the tracks, and one hundred on the other. The track loops around after the people to the other side of the fork, so no matter which way the lever is set, one hundred ninety nine people will be crushed. Or you can pull them off the tracks and destroy the trolley.
No. The trolley problem is an oversimplification that can never accurately reflect reality.