The correct answer is to not pull it. If you pull it you are at least partially to blame for the single person's death, if you don't pull it you share none of the blame.
Fortunately that trolley will loop around and kill the people it missed the first time so everything works out in the end
The correct answer is not to pull it because although five people will die, theyre all clones of hitler so its okay
If you pull it you are at least partially to blame for the single person's death, if you don't pull it you share none of the blame.Debatable (which is the point), because you could have acted and saved five people's lives. Your inaction is as (partially) responsible for their deaths as your action would make you (partially) responsible for the death of the single person if you did pull the lever.
The correct answer is to not pull it. If you pull it you are at least partially to blame for the single person's death, if you don't pull it you share none of the blame.Inaction doesn't make you not culpable.
I personally don't find the trolley problem in its most basic form to be a particularly difficult one, because it's a relatively simple equation: act and one person dies, don't act and five people die. From a cold, dispassionate perspective, the former is eminently preferable to the latter, as it causes the least amount of suffering.
Inaction doesn't make you not culpable.
So even if the answer is subjectively simple and obvious to you, it isn't objectively or universally correct for everyone.Never said that it was, hence why I used the "personally" qualifier in my post.
Many people would disagree, especially if you can act to save someone with minimal risk to yourself and still choose not to.I think you misread their post - Gaawa said that inaction doesn't make you not culpable.
Inaction doesn't make you not culpable.Exactly. I've always instinctively used Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics for problems like this even before I knew they existed. The Zeroth Law is especially useful to me. That's why the correct answer is to pull the lever. Refusing to pull it because you don't want to directly kill anyone is insane troll logic to me. Just to prove my point, let's increase the number of people in the group. How much becomes too much? Will you still refuse to pull it even if it means killing a hundred people? What about a thousand? A million? A billion? All humans except one?
Inaction doesn't make you not culpable.If you don't act you are an observer of someone else's atrocity, if you do act you become a participant of the single person's murder
If you don't act you are an observer of someone else's atrocity, if you do act you become a participant of the single person's murderIf you don't act, you are refusing to save five people whom you had the capability to save. That does not make you "an observer". You may not have directly caused anything, but your deliberate inaction still resulted in their deaths.
in the example above, the best option would be to not pull the lever. the trolly will derail from hitting so many people in a row that the one person at the top will be saved. pulling the lever would kill everyone.From where they're positioned, it looks like their necks and ankles are what are actually on the track. I doubt the trolley would derail from those alone.
If you don't act you are an observer of someone else's atrocity, if you do act you become a participant of the single person's murderNo. Inaction is in and of itself an action that one chooses. In the scenario you choose to either be responsible for 5 deaths or responsible for 1. People who try to weasel out of this are cowards; you are already a participant in the scenario. "I choose not to participate = I could have killed 1 person and saved 5, but I instead killed 5 people and saved 1."
The only reason I wouldn't pull it is if I somehow find the single person's life more important than the group's. It can be both objective or subjective. Subjective is if the single person is someone I love. Objective is if the group consists of dangerous criminals or terminally ill people, or the single person is doing great things for humanity.This is unfortunately where it gets muddled. There's lots of ways to complicate this, as the meme has demonstrated over the years, lol.
Inaction isnt action and the fact that youre trying to argue that it is is ridiculousUh, no. This is actually a very old and well-understood concept.
Inaction isnt action and the fact that youre trying to argue that it is is ridiculous
No. Inaction is in and of itself an action that one chooses. In the scenario you choose to either be responsible for 5 deaths or responsible for 1. People who try to weasel out of this are cowards; you are already a participant in the scenario. "I choose not to participate = I could have killed 1 person and saved 5, but I instead killed 5 people and saved 1."Why am I responsible for a madman putting me in this situation?
Inaction is as much a choice as action is. It's a conscious decision with no less potential for significant consequence than action has. If you decide not to act, that decision should be made with intent, recognizing and accepting the consequences having weighed the benefits.To give another example from another professional field, as an engineer I am ethically bound to not pass bad or dangerous workmanship and see that it is addressed wherever I come across it. If, for instance, I am looking at records or happen to see another engineer's work and I notice an error, particularly one that could result in injury or death, I am *legally obligated* to report my findings and ensure that the issue is fixed - typically this is done by first talking to the document owner and/or the person who prepared the work with the error and, if they do not correct the issue, I would then be required to report them to the applicable engineering ethics board, who would conduct an investigation.
This comes up in medicine a lot: Because the body is constantly trying to heal itself, very often "wait and see what happens" is a viable therapeutic option over shoving more drugs in there, running more tests, or doing surgery. A huge part of learning to be a doctor is learning when to choose inaction over acting more directly, a choice for which the doctor is still entirely responsible because choosing not to act can cause more harm than choosing to act. It's also the central principle behind the concept of triage, in which you ask "if I choose not to act on any of these crises, in which cases will that inaction cause the least overall harm," then using your time to act on the higher-consequence cases.
Quite simply, if you can stop harm from happening, and you choose not to, you bear some responsibility for that harm. Therefore, that choice should be made with intent, weighing the benefits and consequences (including the harm to your mental health of constantly thinking "I can save everyone and I need to always be optimizing my potential to do so") and using that analysis to justify the decision. Pretending you didn't notice the opportunity to intervene is just lying to yourself and anyone else you voice that to.
Why am I responsible for a madman putting me in this situation?No one said you were. You're not responsible for being put in that situation, but most people would consider you responsible for the choice you make once you're there.
Why am I responsible for a madman putting me in this situation?