Trolley dilemmas Part 2

A number of variations to the trolley problem exist, but they are all trivially easy.

“What happens if, on one of the trolley tracks, the President of the United States has been tied by terrorists, and on the other trolley tracks, five average citizens are also tied up. As in the original trolley problem, who should you save?”

Depends on if she’s Democrat or Republican.

“What if the trolley is headed towards five average people you’ve never met but on the other tracks is your mother?” “Do you flip the switch and save five or save your mother?”

Same as above.

“What happens if, on the tracks of one trolley, five men guilty of murder are tied, and on the other, one man is innocent. Should you choose to save the one man, simply because he has committed no crime?”

Depends on if the criminals are registered to vote Democrat or Republican.

These aren’t challenging at all, are they? Let’s mix it up a bit.

Michael Moore & the trolley

You are late for the trolley that takes you to work every day when you spot Michael Moore sitting on the edge of the bridge eating a triple-decker sandwich. If you were to push him off the bridge he would delay the trolley, allowing you to make it to work on time, but the sandwich would probably be lost. What should you do?

Dick Cheney & the trolley

You are Dick Cheney and you are out hunting when you catch sight of a runaway trolley hurtling down a track towards five al-Qaeda suspects. The path of the trolley is about to be diverted, however, by a mainstream news journalist who sympathizes with terrorists. When the journalist flips a switch, the lives of the five al-Qaeda suspects will be saved and the trolley will instead run over a poodle. You have a clear shot at the journalist. There is only your hunting companion, a 78-year-old attorney, standing in the line of fire. In order to shoot the journalist you must fire a shot through the attorney as well. What should you do?

Dick Cheney, his lesbian daughter & the trolley

You are Dick Cheney and your daughter is a lesbian. Other than this extra complication, the scenario is the same as the above. What should you do?

Brother Joseph, Brother Brigham & the trolley

Brother Joseph and Brother Brigham are riding in a stagecoach when they spot a runaway trolley hurtling down a track towards five Sisters not married to Brother Joseph or Brother Brigham. Brother Joseph has 30 wives. Brother Brigham has 31. Who marries the five Sisters?

George W & the trolley

You are George W and you are reading The Pet Goat to some schoolchildren when a runaway trolley crashes into three thousand people. How long do you keep reading??

Chuck Norris & the trolley

You are Chuck Norris and you sight a runaway trolley hurtling down a track where it will kill five innocent people. Beside you is a switch which will divert the trolley to another track where it will kill five different innocent people. It is impossible to save everyone. Do you save everyone, or do you beat up all the bad guys first?

Jimmy Carter & the trolley

You are former President Jimmy Carter and a runaway trolley is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You could flip a switch to divert the trolley to a track where it will kill only one person. Who is best qualified to open up negotiations with the trolley, you, former President Jimmy Carter, or someone else who doesn’t understand the peace process as well as you, former President Jimmy Carter?

Trolley dilemmas Part 1

The tendency to rely on feelings rather than reason as a moral guide is a particularly depressing facet of human nature. There is the famous moral dilemma of the trolley:

A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?

To which most people answer in the affirmative. There is the fat man variation:

The runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track… Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

To which most people, including the inventor of the scenario, answer in the negative. The consequences of both proposed actions in the two thought experiments are the same. Either one person dies, or else five do. So repulsive is the feeling of directly causing a death that most people would prefer to let the greater tragedy occur; five preventable deaths passively allowed bother us less than one death actively caused. The element of direct causation, the only thing that distinguishes the latter proposed action from the former, is of course utterly irrelevant to the dead people.

(If you don’t believe most people really do give the wrong answers to these tests, and are often proud of the fact, read some of the reader responses to the BBC News article)

There is a conclusion to be had here.

1. All other factors the same, the deaths of 5 human beings is a greater evil than the death of 1 human being.
2. The above moral dilemma demonstrates that most people if put in such a situation would choose the greater evil.
3. Therefore, most people are evil.

I’m not joking. Not even 50% joking. Maybe 25% joking. The willful irrationality of man truly is depressing. When will we learn to properly distrust our fweewings when our highly developed faculties of reason are up to the task?

The even more depressing thought — faculties of reason in most of us probably are NOT up to the task.

Too depressing, too depressing. I’ll continue this another day. What would make me fweel better now would be the sense of moral accomplishment I could get from pushing a fat man in front of a trolley in order to save some lives (in a way that flipping a switch to save some lives would not). Failing that, chocolate.

Bush lied, ideologies died

Michael J Totten reports:

Iraq is where ideologies go to die. Arab nationalism, Baathism, anti-Americanism, al-Qaidism, Donald Rumsfeldism, and Moqtada al-Sadrism have either died there or are dying. Conventional liberal opinion, more or less correct about the foundering American war effort from 2004 to 2006, has been severely bloodied—along with Iraq’s worst insurgent groups and militias—by General David Petraeus’s leadership of the American troop surge. Even post-9/11 fear of Islam has proven unsustainable for those who regularly interact with ordinary Iraqis.

“Everything dies in Iraq”. “Stench of death overshadows counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq”. “Another month of surge sees the death toll in Iraq continue to rise”.

If you are a journalist wishing to use one of these headlines for an article, contact me and we’ll talk. My fees are very reasonable.

Aren’t women amazing?

Based on my observations, there are three things which men are better at doing than women–hurting each other, hurting women, and playing chess. But for the things that matter most, men are outclassed.

Alfred Kinsey once interviewed a woman who could be brought to orgasm by stroking her eyebrows. In my research I found a case study of a woman who had an orgasm each time she brushed her teeth (followed by a mild epileptic seizure). Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple, researchers at Rutgers University, have studied a dozen or so women who can “think” themselves to orgasm. Some use imagery, some use breathing techniques. The woman I met who could do it (she demonstrated her skill for me on a bench outside a sushi bar in Oakland, California) had taught herself using imagery and breathing skills learned in a weekend workshop given by sex educator Annie Sprinkle. It took her two years to master the technique.

Article at New Scientist.

Off-topic: Is anyone else on WordPress having trouble posting comments at blogs on Blogspot?

I have discovered the invincible argument

I encountered it recently, and it went like this:

“Anyone who thinks that the reason we went into Iraq was for anything other than oil is insane.”

As I tried to think of a counterargument to this I quickly realized that the task was futile. This truly was an invincible argument. I had no choice but to accept it, as you, my dear readers, must now be realizing yourselves.

Normally when you encounter a statement which is false, you can refute it with a statement of fact. But no statement can be uttered in contradiction to this one without the speaker classifying himself among the mentally unhinged, thereby rendering his own statement, as well as anything else he may say–or even think–as dismissible, at the least. (At the most, he ought be carted off to the funny farm as a preventative measure against further pronouncements of nonsense)

The argument of the type “Anyone who thinks/believes X is insane” is therefore completely impervious to all refutation. It is thoroughly unassailable; the bulletproof standard of debate. It is to debate what Shaquille O’Neal is to basketball. Like the Pythagorean Theorem, it ain’t got no answer. My regret is that it took me this long to discover it. Think of all the applications!

Work – “Anyone who thinks that the most valuable employee this company has got is any person other than myself is insane.”

Try this with your coworkers. Should they attempt to deny it they’ll come out looking like imbeciles in front of your boss, which can only be good for you.

School – “Teacher, anyone who thinks that this assignment is anything other than a total waste of time is insane.”

Ouch! Just imagining the silence with which these words would have stricken my high school chemistry teacher tickles me with delight…and not a small amount of nostalgic regret.

Dating – “Gertrude, anyone who thinks you’ve got anything better to do with your time than go moshing with me this saturday is insane.”

This one is almost too good to share.

Well now, what should you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of the golden argument? You should agree with the speaker–quickly. Otherwise, I’ll be seeing you in the padded cell across from me.

Be like Socrates

The Kyrios Dialogue is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Socratic dialogue in existence that applies the Socratic Method to a modern issue with a dialectical style and effectiveness comparable to the early dialogues of Plato.

Like every Socratic dialogue that has ever been recorded, The Kyrios Dialogue is fiction (who on earth could stand to be around a Socrates-type for longer than a quarter of a minute?) , but the author explains that it was drawn from actual conversation, so it has that going for it.

I enjoyed reading through the whole dialogue. It makes me want to go out and hone my gadfly skills. However, I can’t afford to lose any more friends.