2mo ago

The Prisoner's Trolley Problemma

147 comments

If these are tracks in the US then I just understaff the engineers and maintenance teams and the train derails before I have to make a decision, checkmate.
- If these tracks are in the US, so I am. So I shoot the other guy with the gun(s) I usually carry around when I go out and then pull the lever.

This feels too high quality for a shit post.
- Gotta make sure your fiber intake is decent so you get good quality shit like this

wow what an excellent day in the neighbourhood
i sure hope I won't be faced with an ethical dilemma in the very near future
oh rats it's the trolley problem
- This was super funny, this person has a great career ahead of her. Very Tim and Eric style obscure indie comedy, I loved it.

This isn't philosophy anymore, it's just game theory
- it's interdisciplinary.
- por qué no los dos
- holy prisoner dilemma!
- But what is philosophy really?
- I was thinking the same!
- Not even. Game Theory is supposed to take a lot of stuff into account. Boiling it down to this is insulting and a way to paint situations like proxy wars as immoral.

for the longest time, i did know that game theory did not have anything to do with “games” and that it is somehow connected to the prisoners dilemma, but the concept as such wasn’t very clear to me. If you are like my former me, take 30 minutes out of your day and visit https://ncase.me/trust/ to learn and play around with game theory; it’s a great webpage and it’s pretty good fun all around.
- I did a few game theory simulations in college and they were always real interesting. In one of them for example, it was a multiplayer game, with multiple interactions. I think it was to simulate global trade basically: you could cooperate with as many players as you want and each time you cooperate you both get a point. If you defect then you get two and they get none. However, all the players could see what the other players are doing, so if you defected they would know and probably would play (trade) with you. The best way to win was to form as many connections as possible and fully cooperate the whole time.
  I formed maybe like 20-30 connections with other players and didn't defect. Each point was worth a few cents or something. So I walked out with a check for like $20-$50 or something. Many players walked out with nothing because they cheated too many people too many times and nobody wanted to trade with them.
  Therefore, clearly, the best economic policy is protectionism, tariffs, trade wars, and fucking over both allies and enemies, right? Right?!?
  
  Your simulation seems to only punish selfish actors when that's not always the case. Doesn't include natural monopolies, lacks clandestine exploitation, and there's likely no market capture or saturation. In such a case the only play is to cooperate.
- That page is very well done and interesting, thanks for sharing!
- For those interested, Veritasium has a very good video on this. It also sort of tells what strategy is optimal to "win".
- Thank you for sharing the link. That webpage is amazing!

Which relative is on the track and which in the trolley?
- Your hot cousin is on the track. What would you do?
  
  Don't pull the lever, then there's three thirds of hot cousin to go around regardless of the other person's decision. Philosophy is easy.
- It says loved ones I'm afraid, can't sacrifice one in prison I'm afraid.

Unlike the classic prisoners dilemma, this isn't a nash equilibrium. When I know that the other person pulls their switch, I'd improve my outcome by not pulling mine. Compare to the prisoners dilemma, where not snitching when the other side snitches earns you five years in prison.
- And unlike the original trolley problem, pulling the lever will always kill more people. I'd wager most people wouldn't pull this lever because of this, but I agree there's no Nash equilibrium.

Do nothing that way you don't get to jail for murder. All the pressure goes to the other guy. Sue the railway company, guy who pulled the lever and the creator. Another is find a way not to reach to that point.
- I feel like you're not internalizing that this is a thought experiment.
  
  This is the dumbest thought experiment I've ever seen.
- Also, it's too late to pull the lever, you'll just provoke a crush.
  
  They've already both chosen not to pull the lever at this point. Guess they didn't want to make a wider picture.

You pull the lever, then pew pew pew the other person near the lever.
Boom.
Did I solve it?
Where's my prize?
Wait a minute, gotta shoot everyone else related too. Don't want to face any revenge.
Automatic Weaponry goes brrrr
No witnesses
Okay I saved 1 of my loved ones.
Bingo?
Now theres only one color of people.
Wait am I a racist?

Yell to the guy on the other side that I'm going to pull the lever, so he'd better not.
Then let it go because that both maximizes global utility and poses the lowest risk of the worst case scenario.
- "WHAT? I CANT HEAR YOU THE TRAIN IS TOO LOUD!" pulls lever
  
  OOOHHHHH
  WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA

Theoretically, will a collision cause a breach of the radioactive material that's in the box with my cat? Asking for a friend.
- Yes and no.
- If cat can witness the event, then Yes or No but not both.

This is only superficially a prisoner's dilemma. In a true one, you cannot get a better result for yourself no matter what the other person does, but here if you assume the other person pulled the lever, there is no reason to pull the lever yourself.
To fix this, you can have 4 relatives on the trolley, and 5 of the opposite faction way back on the middle track. Both do nothing, 1 relative of each is killed. One guy switches the lever, their relatives are all fine, other guy loses 5. Both switch, crash with all 8 relatives on the trolley dead.
- I see what you're trying to do and you're not necessarily wrong, but you're kinda perpetuating the attitude that inspired someone to make this meme in the first place
  
  I'm not sure I follow. Should this meme's creator not have been inspired?

If you think about this for any length of time and actually imagine this scenario, you realise you don't pull the lever and it's not even close.
- Wrong. You pick the obviously wrong moral stance and then aggressively yell about it on the internet. The more obvious it becomes that you are wrong, the louder you yell. This protects your ego from introspection.
  
  SHUT UP. THE RIGHT CHOICE IS TO DROP A NUKE ON EVERYONE.
  
  That's something a lot of people will do for fun.
- that right, I'd masturbate on the tracks and on the people tied to the tracks so they are slipery and can slide or bounce to safety. And before you judge me, its the only thing I'm really good at and we should make the most of what we have in life.
  Failing that for whatever reason (or maybe in addition to that), I'd asses which of the prospects are lefties and make sure those people in particular live. Sorry centrists and republicans, but we need the votes and some people have to die, but I'm focussed on doing the least harm here.
  
  wildest trolley solution I've seen so far lmao (the slippery jon trons)
- But then your loved one (mom, dad, sister,child) dies.
- You realize this is your family watching you make the decision to have their vehicle run over a loved one? There's a possibility they all live if you pull it.
  
  Or if you pull it, then they see you make the decision to risk their lives to kill three other people.
  What is better, three lives lost or one life lost?

The outcome from both levers pulled is so steep that it really makes no sense to pull the lever
- That's why they won't pull the lever, and that's why you should.
  
  They'll be thinking the same thing tho and if there is a greater than 20% chance of them pulling the lever it'd be worse in terms of losing family members than not pulling at all.
  But in terms of overall death, not pulling the lever is 1 or 4, and pulling the lever is 4 or 13
  
  Not really. This would all happen so fast and be emotionally, not logically, driven.

Have these folks seen The Good Place? Or are they just approaching the same conclusion by accident?
- By far the smartest show ever written and it's not even close!
  
  Lmao what. Sure it covers philosophy 101, but not as smart as say, Dark, Mr Robot, Better Call Saul, Watchmen etc.
  
  You need to watch more shows. Don't get me wrong, I like The Good Place and what they were trying to do with it, but yeah no there's a lot of other shows that are just as educational and well written that don't have to do a show-wide reset to start every season
  
  Idk .. Andor has a really good message.
- For a second there, I really thought you meant

Questions: why doesn't the person at the switch run and get the person off the tracks? And the people on the trolley hop off or try to the sslow the trolley?
- They are tied to their chair with the only thing they can do being flipping the lever. It is the prisoner’s trolley problem
- something something about conservation of momentum, them jumping off speeds up the trolley
  
  Not if they jump from the front of the trolley
- I think this exposes the sadism of philosophy the past few hundred years.
  Often, it’s been some rich idle folks making up murderous fantasies in their heads while looking down at my ancestors . “Oh, you don’t know page 273 of Aristotle’s rejoinder? Haha, you must be too poor”.

This guy is already implying that youll like it better if 3 randoms die as 1 loved one, he's choosing for you already in the explanation 😭😭😭
- Yeah, would work better if there was one stranger in the middle

mercifully pulling both levers.
- But then how do you kill the remaining two people?
  
  Survivor's guilt

Which loved one are we talking about here? Some are more loved than others.

How much did I like that one guy really.
- Are the 5 people on the opposong trolley worthy of death? Will killing them outweigh losing my loved ones?
  Or is the one loved one ill save my really hot 1st cousin?
  Because with the rest of the family dead, we can live happily ever after without any annoying incest complaints.
  
  ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

To quote something I made up and say all the time, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.”
- nice. with such wisdom you should have been a captain or something.
- I say "you can do this three different ways and still be wrong."

I think these scenarios might be easier to analyze if we made them a bit more realistic.
This an analogy for military intervention. If we empower our military to be proactive, we can save one "good guy"^TM by killing 3 bystanders. But if NATO's adversaries are participating too we lose 3 of our "good guy"^TM
- I think the abstract nature is one of the strengths. If you ask someone a question about military intervention, their pre-existing views towards military intervention will heavily bias their answer.
  
  Yeah that's a good point. Maybe I should amend my statement to say something like:
  If this seems like an absurd hypothetical, consider reframing it. Multiply all the numbers by a factor of between 1,000 to 1,000,000 and make them "our soldiers", "bystanders" and "enemy soldiers" respectively.
  
  its also a good metaphor for climate change
- Look at the actual Cuban Missile Crisis.

Well obviously you should pull the lever once the front wheels past the split but before the rear wheels cross it, so that trolley gets off the rails. This way everybody has the chance to survive and you have defensible position during inevitable court hearing.

Throw the trolley off the side of the ferry.
- and here. we. go
  
  "What's with all the chickens, foxes, and cabbages?"

The meaning behind the trolly problem has been entirely eroded at this point.

I ban trolleys. Everyone walks.

I would tie a really really long string to the lever and attach the string to a large bird and then scare it into flying away. Then I would eat some delicious Heinz Baked Beans

For some people, this is a problem. For others, this is a solution.

I think the premise falls apart on the assumption that I consider pulling the lever as best case.
- Yeah, it would be more interesting if the middle track were empty.

Sounds like your typical game theory problem.
Not pulling the lever: Worst case: Your loved ones dies Best case: None
Pulling the lever: Worst case: Your loved ones dies Best case: Your loved ones survives
- Worst case for pulling the lever is 5 loved ones die and so do 8 strangers.
  Its stated that when not pulling the lever the loved ones on the cart to survive (with ptsd).
  Highest risk/best reward vs No risk/minimal loss.
  
  nah you forgot my solution of also lying down on the track and daring the trolley to switch the track itself
  
  I guess I didn't read the problem properly.

More challenging if there's only one person on the middle tracks.

Goddamn it, Joker

Nuke it from orbit.
- 👍 It's the only way to be sure

According to transit and transport regulation, such scenario would be impossible

Just kill them all
- with a knife or whatever

Veritasium did a great video on the prisoners dilemma... What Game Theory Reveals about Life, The Universe, and Everything Prof. Robert Axelrod held a tournament in 1980 to produce a computer program to explore the prisoners dilemma... Axelrod's Tournament

And where are their arms and legs?
- They didn't keep them inside the car at all times.
- amputee representation. don't make it weird.

Yell to the other lever dude that I'm not pulling the lever but fuck those beige dudes, hope they can't tell i'm lying, run and lay down with the beige dudes, and if I'm lucky they pull their lever too and we get maximum carnage. If lever dude suspects I'm lying and insane, and thus doesn't pull their lever, at least I won't have to answer my loved ones' questions.

What do I do? I introduce myself to the other person, then we go out for drinks, then we fuck all night.
We no longer give a shit about the assholes on the tracks.

Jokes on you, No loved ones, so who cares if you pull the lever or not, go have a frothy instead.

Yell "Jump!"

As many frags as possible

Give the loved ones guns

Philosphers really just go "imagine how fucked up it would be if..." and then take it incredibly seriously

Depends on the loved one, tbh 🤷🏼‍♂️

There is no such thing as an "amount of people". It's "number of people". And the question given is basic game theory, just worded to be nasty.
- I think it's "amount" after the trolley is done squishing them into goo

looking at the junction points on that diagram only one side of the axle would change track if the switch was pulled resulting in a derailment so you could ignore the possibility of hitting the people in the middle thereby reducing this example to two parallel but unconnected trolley problems
i choose to kill whoever calls them trolleys and not trams

Please learn how to draw basic sketches of railway switches. It's not that hard.

Tit. For. Tat.

easy pull both levers

"Killing almost everyone"... okay, but even in that "worst" case, both lever operators loved ones are fine, so it's not the worst case for them
All they have to deal with is a little existential PTSD bubbling up occasionally. Whatever, add it to the pile. They can lean on their still alive loved ones in those tough times.
Also, stay off the fucking tracks, fucks sake.

pull my gun, kill the other person and move the lever, as far i can know that person is the one this whole thing upfamily up

you find some third way thats not the bad outcomes that are suggested. Theres always possibilities in life and people who say there are not are generally trying to coerce you.

The last line of these is always what the poster wants to happen
everything else is skewed rationale to make you think it is a funny
it is, in reality, anti-intellectual propaganda
- I think most of these have just become self-satire and clever attempts to come up with increasingly convoluted ethical choices.
  It's not anti-intellectualism, it's anti-trolly-problem specifically.
  
  My favorite version is:
  A trolley is approaching a junction and you have the ability to leave the switch where it is, sending the trolley into an innocent person tied to the tracks, or pull the lever sending the trolley down the tracks to someone else that is now faced with the same trolley problem.

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