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 )
You and me have zero control of the trolley. In fact, statistically we are among the “billions who must die”. Stop wasting your time with philosophical distractions when our lives and futures are at stake now. Let’s kill the billionaires reaping obscene profits from destroying the planet first, and see how that goes. After that, if you still feel that the unwashed masses need thinning, I suggest you lead by example.
OP, whatever you are on, don’t use it ever again. There is no reason to think that torturing and killing kids will solve global warming. In short, it is a useless hypothetical that adds nothing to the discussion about solving the problem. Meaning it useless, while you get to pretend that you are somehow smart. Newsflash: you are not.
It’s insight like that. Thanks
Trolley problem is a bullshit in the first place, just as your “what if” nonsense. Millions of innocent children are dying and being tortured already by the capitalism, which is also main cause of global warming.
China isn’t capitalist and is factually the largest contributor by far to global warming across the globe. Sure, the US is second on the list, but after that, it’s quite far down before capitalism appears again.
Capitalism may suck, but it dilutes the water to pin nonsense like this on it when there’s actual arguments against it that merit real consideration.
China has the most people within its borders. Your logic seems to imply that dividing China into say 10 different states would solve the problem. A much better metric is per capita.
per cApiTa!
- Per capita it’s not, by far it’s not.
- Ever wondered why it has such emissions? Because it produce literally half of everything produced in the world, for usage of both you and me and everyone else. Sourcing of emissions by consumption make it way worse for west. Why? Capitalism, imperialist countries consume far more.
- Historical emissions. Wow. Even worse picture for the west. They don’t get to deindustrialise then whine about China’s emissions. Why? Capitalism again.
- Outsourcing production to cheaper countries isn’t ecologically friendly move. Capitalism again.
- China is the only country which consistently rolls out ecological initiatives on a systemic level, US dismantle even their own poor as shit regularions and euros set up the emission market and are trading it, pretending it’s meaningful. Capitalism again.
lol… per capita. Apologia at its finest.
“China is perfect!” - said the communist.
Wow you managed to make a complete illiterate and bad faith dumbass of yourself in just two sentences. You should repost that to some reddit main, maybe you would get some reward.
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.
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.
Ya it’s trolly problem. I just figured that out.
So now I’m reflecting on the trolly problem.
The military gets a lot of trolly problems.
Are you old enough to be online?
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about???
Not sure, but definitely made a lot of people think
Yeah like “wtf is op on?”
we’re already torturing and murdering millions of innocent children in gaza, africa and southeast asia and we’re actively enabling climate change to maintain american dominance; is that okay?
Which is ironically undermining American dominance
only because of gaza and even then only because of tiktok. after all: we’ve been murdering millions of across the entire world to maintain our comfort and none of it got anywhere near as much attention as it does now because of social media platforms that were not controlled by our oligarchy. ie tiktok.
emphasis is “were not controlled” because tiktok is very much under control now.
I have only tortured children as a passenger in an automobile, using flatulance and automatic window locks. I have not murdered anyone. I have never used ticktalk.
It irritates me a lot when people use ‘we’ and ‘our’ in contexts that include me, when they do not apply to me.
So to rephrase your first comment in this chain:
The american government, via israeli and other proxy and puppet armies they have created, are already torturing and murdering millions of innocent children in gaza, africa and southeast asia and unchecked capitalist corporations, both american and international, are actively enabling climate change to maintain american military dominance to serve as their shield from the people who resist; is that okay?
The answer is: No.
I have not been comfortable for a long time, figuratively and literally, long before I ever heard about gaza, since before I was considered an adult, a few weeks prior to 9/11.
I have protested in many ways since then, with several years incarcerated because of it.
I have lived an impoverished life by american standards, although not the same level of poverty as other places, by several orders of magnitude for some places.
It is the billionaire kleptocracy that is controlling the country I am trapped in, that is causing climate change. Not me, with my lack of using fossil fuels whenever I had the choice, eating locally grown as much as available, avoiding supporting the worst companies such as big oil and the process and/or fast food complex.
Sorry for the rant. Like I said, I really hate when people say ‘we’ and it includes me.
Your emotions are getting in the way of your thinking
their emotions are fine, you’re just a gutless coward who is incapable of engaging with reality
That’s some good rationality there. Well done.
you’re treated as you deserve. ignoring a question grounded in reality in favor of entertaining pointless hypotheticals is not a very rational use of your time
Yr nuts
i doubt that there is a clearer example of re-framing the narrative than your question.
Were you on drugs? Of course that’s not okay.
It’s the trolly problem. So yr spending 100 to save a million
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No I never saw “the good place”.
But I’ve seen a dozen other things that touch this idea.
One I really like is “Utopia”. 2013. British. Good music.
what if the world was made of pudding?
At one hand I’d say : you really need (mental)help
At the other hand … Global warming is doing just that.
So if it’s guaranteed global warming is reversed and not starts over, one could reason it’s justified (biggest question, which/who’s children is it ghonna be)
I was recently traumatized by an incident of gratuitous moral simplemindedness. Maybe you can gimme some complex fresh air. Or maybe you can’t
It was the ending of King’s"The Institute". He autocastarates bigtime. But I guess you gotta ask, who is he writing for?
If they are going to be living short lives in tortuous conditions thanks to climate change anyways, than yes. Otherwise no.
Could we maybe substitute the children with the one million richest people on the planet?
Ok so replace the 5 guys on the track with 5 terminal cancer patients. Definitely makes it easier.
Makes what easier?
You don’t have to do that.
We don’t need to. We just need to stop letting business interests direct economic priority.
Sharp as a bag of fresh mozzarella you guys
If you want a serious answer ask a serious question. Not an absurd and ghoulish hypothetical.
What if we had to torture and murder you to solve global warming? Would that be ok?
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If there is absolutely no other option, yes. Even dropping nukes over the whole earth is okay if that solves a massive long term problem.
Yeah I guess that’s the ultimate math of it. I’m new to chewing this riddle. I think the most popular answer is to shout that the riddle doesn’t exist. I’m still chewing on it.
You’re chewing on your own dick and balls, this isn’t some deep question it’s an asinine rephrasing of the trolley problem.
Dick and balls aside, no shit Sherlock.
I will gladly torture some puppies if it means that no more dogs are killed after that. The end result is more important than short term “issues”.
I used to have an ethical dilemma about animal testing in medicine but then realised that the animals would have been killed anyways and would have had a shitty life before that, in farms or something. Now, at least their suffering is not in vain.
Ideally, there would be no suffering of any organism, but if push comes to shove, you have to make sacrifices.
Yeah the logic is clear. But consider the lesson of War Games.
The riddle can also be a mindfucking trap. The first, implicit, assertion of these kinds of riddles is that you must solve the riddle because the riddle is important (because it accurately represents reality or something)
But that might not be so.
So if we’re gonna cut through the riddle then that might be our access point.
I know what you are trying to say but I assume that there is no other option to solve the problem, what the post implied.
Well yes, that’s my point. For the purposes of our game of riddle-solving the assumption is valid. But for the purposes of “reality” it isn’t.
So there’s something going on with perspective there.
Are we witnessing the DNC forming their 2028 presidential platform here in real time? I can’t wait to have a bunch of right-wing liberals tell me why murdering millions of kids is absolutely necessary and that I’m obviously a conservative Russian plant for not supporting it.
It’s the trolly problem. A classic.
What do you think is the use of trolley problems?
