I wouldn’t switch places with the poor bastard on the tracks either.
I would help to the extent that it wouldn’t kill me.
But would you switch the track from 5 to 1?
See post #1
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"You contend it is proximity. I contend it is choice. How would people respond to the scenario if the fat man is unconscious and can not be revived? I think you would find that many more would be willing to push him off the bridge than if he were next to you and aware of the situation. "
I really don’t think choice (on the part of the 1 victim) has anything to do with it. Otherwise, the problem would have you ask the fat man if he would sacrifice himself. In my opinion, the questions is getting to how people feel about sacrificing a nameless faceless victim versus a person who is right in front of them.
"In scenario 2 the fat man is an innocent bystander. By pushing him into harms way you have now added a wrong into the equation. In 1 you are choosing between someone elses 5 wrongs or their 1 wrong. In this case, you are adding your own wrong to hope to counter 5 wrongs. "
That’s not accurate. In both scenarios, you are putting 1 person who was not in danger of being run over into danger. In scenario 1, there is no reason to think the single person tied to the tracks will be killed unless you flip the switch. Similarly, in scenario 2, there is no reason to think the fat man will be hurt unless you push him onto the tracks.
The reason we hesitate in proximityu is not yuck but our ability to ascertain the victim’s preference.
The Angels Flight Trolley/Railway is the shortest railway in the world: 300 Feet long, got shut down in 2001 for running over a fat guy, was shut down for 9 years, re-opened in May of this year and rides are still only .25.
"The reason we hesitate in proximityu is not yuck but our ability to ascertain the victim’s preference. "
Huh? You think anyone has a preference for being tossed in front of a trolley? The reason people find it more difficult to justify pushing the man in front of the trolley is because they have to personally deal with him. It’s the same general dynamic that says that it’s not ok to cut in line at the movies, but it’s fine to shove your car into a line of other cars to avoid a long line. It’s the same dynamic that leads to the idea of a firing squad where some members have blanks and some have live rounds, and none know which is which.
The fat man’s preference has nothing to do with the dilemma presented to the answerer, unless you start making assumptions not justified by the givens of the problem.
OK. We disagree. I believe that in a control room far away with no means to communicate, we assume that the one would agree that it is better to save five. We then decide it is OK to switch the track. When confronted with tossing a guy on the tracks to save five, the difference is not merely proximity but our inability to assume that he would be ok with it.
this thread has sunk into a shitload of minutia : )
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"OK. We disagree. I believe that in a control room far away with no means to communicate, we assume that the one would agree that it is better to save five. We then decide it is OK to switch the track. When confronted with tossing a guy on the tracks to save five, the difference is not merely proximity but our inability to assume that he would be ok with it. "
Yes, we disagree. I’m not sure why you’re worried about our inability to assume the fat guy’s ok with being thrown on the track, but aren’t worried about the preferences of the 1 guy tied to the other track.
I’m fairly certain, regardless of the assumptions you’ve made, that choice or preference has nothing to do with the design of the problem.
The difference is that one person is there by chance, unrelated to the events. The other is a victim who has already been captured by the villain and has been set up in the unfortunate scenario where the trolley rider has to make a choice.
I agree that there is ultimately no difference in the outcome and am personally not making a moral judgement on either decision. All I am saying is that I believe this is how it is likely perceived by a majority of the population. I think this is more than likely the motivator rather than the close and personal versus the lever.
Consider this…and remember, you have to put yourself in the shoes of most people. In the end of Last of the Mohicans the woman was to be burned at the stake. Daniel Day Lewis offered himself up as a replacement. He told the Englishman man to translate this for him. He did, but instead of offering up Lewis, he offered himself up.
I think the audience perception would have been that he would have to be a real jerk to freely switch the two and take the woman for himself.
I’m sliding off on a tangent…back to the point. Imagine this scenario and you have the choice of leaving the woman on the stake or trading her for an innocent bystander who has nothing to do with any of them. Ultimately there should be no difference, right? Killing one random innocent person to save another.
But I think people perceive it as if “fate” has already chosen the first person and to make a willful decision to trade that person with another innocent person is “unfair” to that second person. It’s like stealing a TV to replace our stolen TV. Ultimately the end result is the same. Exactly one person has had their TV stolen. All you did was shift who that person was.
Again, I’m not saying that this is right (why would I). I’m just saying this is how people would perceive it.
I have heard this explanation before but don’t agree with it. Do you? If so, can you explain it further?
The reason I don’t agree with it is that the results don’t change if the situation is all innocents with no “wrongs.”
See my last post.
"See my last post. "
Yeah. Saw it. Don’t agree with it.
Would the disparity be lessened if the fat man was tied up on top of the bridge by the villain? That would eliminate the “innocent bystander” and “consent” variables. It would then boil down to proximity – is it easier to kill someone by pushing a remote button than to cut their head off with an axe?
Yeah. Saw it. Don’t agree with it.
Don’t agre with what? You don’t agree that a lot of people would feel that way?
“Don’t agre with what? You don’t agree that a lot of people would feel that way?”
I disagree that whether or not the fat man is on the bridge by chance instead of villainous intent has anything to do with the way the problem is designed, or the reaction most people would have to the problem.
I think the “fat man” problem was designed to complement the original trolley problem to test how people felt about killing the innocent in a case in which they have to take active, rather than passive, part in the killing.
Might some people worry about the fat man being plopped their by chance? Maybe. Some might also worry about asking if the fat man is willing to sacrifice himself. Some might also worry about what happens to the man tied to the tracks if you don’t flip the switch (does he die anyway?). There are all kinds of things you could possibly inject or assume to change the basic problem.
Funny, I remember leading up to elections I would talk to both liberals and conservatives about how they thought the election would go and most of them are certain that their candiadate will win because of all of the obvious flaws that the other candidate has. In those cases its pretty clear that the person I’m talking to has no grasp of how the rest of the country thinks and assumes that they will see things the way that they do.
(a clear example is when Art was certain that McCain would mop Obama up in the debates because McCain could simply rely on being a war hero. While that certainly scores a lot of points with people like Art, it turned out to not really be that important).
I think it is really difficult to tell exactly what the rationale is by the typical person who responded to this poll. I’ve read both Freakanomics books (and a few other sources) and they talk about these economics experiments that they would perform. Essentially the experiments are a study in human behavior and how they respond to different scenarios, which is vital to the understanding of economics.
Time and time again they would set up these experiments assuming that they could predict how the respondants would react, and plenty of times they were dead wrong (hence the need for the experiments in the first place) despite being highly intelligent and educated economists, which I think might be the problem. We have to remember that the average person has an IQ of between 85 and 115, never went to college, has not served in the military, hasn’t read the Bible to any great degree nor read any classic literature or philosophy books, and has never devoted themselves to a hobby that has lead them to any sort of success. ie The average person doesn’t think like the average LR poster. In fact, when I taught in a poor school district I was often shocked at the moral conclusions a lot of the students would draw (some examples would include when it is or is not justified to beat someone up, steal, cheat, etc).
I have a hard time seeing why someone would see pushing a fat man off a bridge or pulling a lever would be any different, but you certainly do. You have a hard time seeing what difference it makes between killing one innocent person over another while I do. The best I can guess is that some percentage of the respondants probably feel one way while some feel the other. As to what those numbers actually are is probably beyond any of our abilities to guess and would probably require another level of experiment/poll to get an idea of what the actual answer is.
"I have a hard time seeing why someone would see pushing a fat man off a bridge or pulling a lever would be any different, but you certainly do. "
I understand that some people do see it differently, and understand why, although, as I stated, I don’t agree. However, I’m not making any supposition about how “most” people would feel about the scenario. That’s why we do surveys and studies.
"You have a hard time seeing what difference it makes between killing one innocent person over another while I do. "
Again, I don’t have a problem seeing the difference, I just don’t agree that it’s particularly applicable to this scenario, nor do I think it was the intent of whoever came up with the fat man scenario to measure people’s response to that particular concept. I completely acknowledge that SOME people will come up with all sorts of reasons to go one way or the other in this scenario. I just also think that most of those alternate paths will be the result of people injecting information that isn’t a “given” in the problem. We have no way of knowing whether the fat man is willing to sacrifice himself. We have no way of knowing how the fat man got on the bridge (maybe he was put there by the same villain that tied the other guy to the tracks). We have no way of knowing what happens to the single guy tied to the track after the other 5 die if we don’t flip the switch. So, we’re left with what we DO know, and my opinion is that some of the concepts introduced here have been injected by the readers, and are not a part of what we really “know” about the problem.
However, I’m not making any supposition about how “most” people would feel about the scenario.
That was the only point I was making, though I admit that I could be wrong…or at least wrong to a larger degree than I suspect.
So, we’re left with what we DO know, and my opinion is that some of the concepts introduced here have been injected by the readers, and are not a part of what we really “know” about the problem.
All we know is that the alternative was pushing a fat man off of a bridge. We have no idea if he’d be willing to jump, if he is more or less innocent than the guy on the tracks, if he would be considered more or less of a victim, etc.
What we do know is that people are less likely to push him over. The reasons for that would be left up to guessing.
1 - it’s more personal
2 - pushing a fat guy off would instill guilt by further oppressing an opressed class of citizen (he’s fat).
3 - it’s the injection of a bystander who is not involved in the conflict
4 - etc.
Speaking of 3, I’ve often seen this scenario. A bully decides he’s going to pick a fight with someone. You then step in to defend that person and the bully proclaims that it is none of your business and that it is between him and his victim.
Obviously the bully does this, on some level, to maintain control of the situation. That’s clear. But, nevertheless, he feels that this is a reasonable argument and that you should, somehow, respect that you are not to be a part of this conflict.
I’ve always been rather baffled by this concept, but I have seen it often enough. I always thought, “why do you get to just pick a fight with someone, but I can’t pick a fight with you?”
I do believe that there is this sense that some people have that, as I stated before, people see a moral difference between being involved within an already established conflict, or injecting a non-involved person into the conflict. Call it the “none of your business” code of ethics, if you wish.
I actually cross across a lot of different social classes, as i’m sure you have being a military guy, though you guys do a pretty good job of wiping that out of people in basic training (not sure how much lingering effects there are). Especially now that I am playing in a heavy metal band I am really getting exposed to a lot of local blue collar culture which is vastly different from my usual white collar circles. As a teacher I got to see this in teens, but now I am witnessing the adult level of this.
Anyway, i think the bottom line is that a lot of people do a lot of things for a lot of reasons that seems to make complete sense in their social circles while it seems completely loony to me.