EDIT Ok so it’s just the trolly problem.
EDIT2 : AHA War Games 1983. “The only winning move is not to play.” (We might call this the final product of a lot of smart philosophical digestion, because it’s a famous movie). There’s always the perfectly valid option to ditch the riddle. (Because maybe the riddle is dumb, or maybe the riddle is no better than a thousand others, utilitywise )
Ok, why is the trolley problem bullshit? Seriously.
Because the narrative can be edited so easily to result in whatever outcome makes your argument for you.
It’s not empirical, it’s simply an amplifier for whatever agenda is warranted by it.
You can construct a trolley problem to justify anything you want. It’s about the constraints that the person who posed the question chose. You don’t really get to choose in a trolley problem. The constraints choose for you. In the real world, our options are not so constrained and the outcomes are not so clear. As such it is useless for actually figuring out what to do.
The trolley problem is a useful basic philosophical experiment to get people to think about things and reflect on constraints, assumptions, and values. And often the best response is in fact “fuck these constraints and assumptions!”
So the trolley problem is not bullshit, but it is very very often misapplied in a bullshit or bad faith way, for example last year in the US I saw a lot of liberals uncritically and unironically appeal to “the trolley problem” to rationalize voting for the party that was committing a live-streamed Holocaust. They were using it to absolve themselves of the responsibility to think about and own their moral judgements, and that is the sort of misuse that a lot of people balk at.
Who’s justifying?
*people can construct, not you specifically. But maybe you, I don’t know.
Are you going to read or think about the comment or are we done here?
Sorry man. Lemmy fatigue. I think I’ve had it.
Because it implies utilitarianism is the best option by oversimplifying the problem. For example in your example you gave zero details on the situation.
It’s what we call an abstraction. This particular abstraction highlights a moral point.
Not bullshit. Useful and interesting.
Go back to your cartoons kid.
Typically, an abstraction maintains the essence of the original. Asking “what if <good thing>, but it costs <bad thing>” isn’t an abstraction.
I’m not aware of a proposed solution to climate change that involves mass torture or murder.
The question feels more like one of those terrible parlor games where you have to pick a few cards and then argue some randomly generated point.
Thanks man. You really got to the heart of it there
Okay let me try another abstraction. Should we cure cancer but kill a bunch of people?
That’s the same riddle. You get that, right?
And so we find ourselves without an easy answer. And so we are forced to inspect the riddle more closely. To uncover hidden assumptions and such. We might even do that in conversation, on a forum like lemmy.
The core of the riddle is that it is an ultimatum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum
Ultimatums have been debated historically, in great detail. For example, in the old testament of the bible.
https://www.bibleoutlines.com/isaiah-361-377-dont-make-a-deal-with-the-devil/
Even if one is not religious or cares not for reading biblical stuff, it is simplified effectively as such:
If given only 2 choices, it is never fair. Find another choice.
I think that’s a different thing.