Difference between revisions of "Trolley problem"
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According to surveys, about 90% of people would pull the switch and kill the one person to save the five. There are many variations on this problem which try to determine how people think about this internally. | According to surveys, about 90% of people would pull the switch and kill the one person to save the five. There are many variations on this problem which try to determine how people think about this internally. | ||
| − | Personally, I would not throw the switch because I think it's wrong to kill an innocent person in order to save the lives of five others who would have died anyway. | + | Personally, I would not throw the switch because I think it's wrong, without permission, to kill an innocent person in order to save the lives of five others who would have died anyway. To think of it another way, suppose you were in a hospital waiting room, and five patients come in, each needing an organ transplant to survive, and you just so happen to be a perfect match for all of them, would you want the doctor to harvest your organs, killing you in the process, without even asking your permission? |
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| + | One of the traditional criticism of the Trolley Problem is that it is so unlikely to happen in real life, it doesn't address a dilemma that ordinary people would face. However, with the advent of self-driving cars, which will encounter similar issues, the problem has become a legitimate problem that designers have to worry about, and, as such, has seen a resurgence. | ||
==Links== | ==Links== | ||
Revision as of 11:09, 7 June 2018
The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment based an ethical dilemma described in its modern format by Philippa Foot in 1967. The problem can be described as follows:
- Assume there is a runaway trolley moving down the tracks where five people have been tied down. You are standing at a switch that can be pulled which will divert the trolley away from the five people, but one person is tied to the other track. If you pull the switch, one person will be killed, if you do nothing, five people will be killed. Which is more ethical, to pull the switch or not?
According to surveys, about 90% of people would pull the switch and kill the one person to save the five. There are many variations on this problem which try to determine how people think about this internally.
Personally, I would not throw the switch because I think it's wrong, without permission, to kill an innocent person in order to save the lives of five others who would have died anyway. To think of it another way, suppose you were in a hospital waiting room, and five patients come in, each needing an organ transplant to survive, and you just so happen to be a perfect match for all of them, would you want the doctor to harvest your organs, killing you in the process, without even asking your permission?
One of the traditional criticism of the Trolley Problem is that it is so unlikely to happen in real life, it doesn't address a dilemma that ordinary people would face. However, with the advent of self-driving cars, which will encounter similar issues, the problem has become a legitimate problem that designers have to worry about, and, as such, has seen a resurgence.
Links
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem - Wikipedia.
- youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA - Testing the trolley problem in real life.
