Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Of Trolleys and Tanks
New Mount Carmel Center during the FBI assault on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, TX.
There are five people tied to the tracks of an unstoppable, runaway trolley. Their death is imminent. However, in your hand is a switch. If you flip that switch, then the trolley is diverted down a different track, away from those five people… and down a track onto which one person is tied. Death is certain no matter what you do. Flip that switch and you have actively assented to the death of a fellow human being. Do nothing and you have passively assented to the death of five fellow human beings. What do you do?
The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment that is often introduced in college freshman classes on ethics. Many people are familiar with the problem and its point: There are some situations without fully ethical solutions. One decision is just as ethically questionable as the other, and each decision is ultimately and solely based on the decision maker’s own principles. However, the Trolley Problem suffers as a thought experiment because it lacks context. It is very easy to imagine how one would behave in a no-win situation when that situation remains a safe and detached theoretical. Unfortunately, we no longer have such a luxury.
Never before have I experienced a dilemma which maps so readily to the Trolley Problem as this year’s presidential race. There are only two possible outcomes: Clinton is our next president or Trump is. And individual people, based upon their personal principles, find one or the other outcome to be morally repugnant. In this Trolley Problem, the #NeverTrump position, either through abstaining, writing-in, or voting third party, is that of passively assenting to Clinton, while the #NeverHillary position is that of actively assenting to Trump. As with any Trolley Problem, neither position can claim to be more ethical than the other.
As I have stated before and often, my personal position is #NeverSoros, which currently places me in the #NeverHillary camp. As such, I would like to make an honest and respectful appeal to the people of #NeverTrump and to their principles. In doing so, I must add some context to our shared Trolley Problem.
This particular bit of context must be added because I expect that it hasn’t been added already. The reason I expect so is because the context is pitch dark. It is a source of deep national shame. It is a stain on our history so horrific that few choose to look at it. I doubt that it is taught in our schools. I doubt further that Millennials have even heard of it. We don’t talk about it, because it’s easier. We dismiss those who mention it as fringe, because it’s too unsettling. But it is there. And, God help me, I’m putting it on the table.
Sixteen years is a long time, a long enough time to forget the horror show that was the Clinton regime. It would be easy to mention mundane outrages such as the Clinton’s looting of the White House and their administration’s trashing of it on their way out the door, or even their tacit admission to corruption with their Soprano’s video spoof. But such mundane outrages rise only to the level of vulgar, a word that is often cited in arguments against Trump. But, for all of his bluster and showmanship, for all of his vulgar coarseness, let me remind you of some things that Trump never did.
Donald Trump never served as a high ranking official – a so-called Co-President – in an administration which rolled military tanks on an American civilian population. He never served in an administration which forced a protracted stand-off which ended with a community in ashes and the majority of its population, including the majority of its children, dead. He never served in an administration which did all this and then claimed that it was done to protect those very same children. He never served in an administration in which, afterward, no one, to my knowledge, was held to account for one of the worst law enforcement tactical blunders in American history. He never served in an administration which, instead of granting due process to the most deplorable of Americans, granted overwhelming, terrifying, military force.
Hillary Clinton did.
We treat Islamic terrorists better.
In a recent email leaked by Wikileaks, John Podesta claimed that Hillary Clinton, “has begun to hate everyday Americans.” Hillary herself has called Trump supporters “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” These everyday Americans, these deplorables and irredeemables are your neighbors, your friends, your family, and given Hillary’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” rhetoric, maybe even you yourself in the #NeverTrump camp.
The 2016 election trolley can not be stopped from rolling. But, #NeverTrump-ers, perhaps something a great deal more terrifying can be. Consult your principles. I will respect your choice. The switch is in your hands.
Published in General
That changes the problem! All else no longer becomes equal at that point. The original trolley problem is one that assumes all six victims are strangers of relative average goodness and moral worth.
As @A-Squared points out, even when you seem to change the problem superficially to pushing the fat man off a bridge to save the five, you’ve actually changed the problem fundamentally. I don’t think this is an example of a false intuition. Something changes morally when everyone was tied to the tracks before you came along vs. being the one who pushes someone in front of the track. All else is no longer equal.
Something changes probabilistically:
It’s intuitively likely that pushing someone in front of the train won’t be enough to stop the train and you’ll have six dead people, not one or five, one of whom you murdered just on the hope that it *might* benefit the five others.
And that is a valid Utilitarian view. It might even be the Deontological view. But I suspect that the Aristotelian view would consider living with the guilt of actively taking a life, opt for the passive guilt, and walk away from the switch.
Now that is an Aristotelian approach to the problem: context, man, context!
No, it’s not my descision alone. I know with certainty that my vote will not change the outcome, because a clear majority of voters in my state will vote for Hillary. Because of that, my decision in the voting booth will do nothing to change the outcome of who will win my state’s electoral votes.
And what do I have to do to not be considered assenting? Overthrow government?
Because it’s implicit that trying to kill people is generally wrong, and in order for it to be ethically justified you need a pretty good reason for doing it. “I know it won’t save those people, but screw it, let’s do it anyway!” Is not a particularly good reason.
I understand it sounds Utilitarian or Deontological, but it isn’t. I’m neither of those things. There are many places where utilitarian type thinking works, there are just plenty of marginal cases where it breaks down.
I’m an intuitionist. There are not necessarily hard and fast rules, at least that we’ve discovered yet. And when we have a rule like statement, there can still be places where there is an exception. Do you think morality is objective? Is there one right answer in most situations or can everyone have their own opinion as long as it’s internally consistent?
Well, I’m really not sure that’s true. If it was definite the fat man would stop the train saving the 5, I’m pretty sure it’s still wrong to push him.
It’s easy enough to change the thought experiment to ensure the train stops (eg, I changed it slightly to blowing up a bridge in my comment #66 although admittedly that was primarily because you can’t really push 149 people off a bridge).
You can see a number of variants on the thought experiment at the wikipedia page.
I also found this
My intuition has a very hard tim believing that fat men are as reliable at diverting the course of a train as railroad points are. I don’t think I could ever confidently know in real life that shoving fat men in front of trolleys would work reliably, whereas railroad points are designed for the purpose of reliably diverting trains, so you can expect they will.
Additionally, how would I know so quickly that there aren’t people on the trolley who’d get hurt if the fat-man-derailing method did happen to work?
This is why Socrates didn’t have any female disciples. Too many questions.
You can construct the scenario such that the five men are just around a bend and the train will not have time to stop once the engineer sees the men, but if you throw someone in front of the train well before the bend, the engineer will stop once he hits the single man, enabling the train to stop in time before it hits the five men.
It’s a thought experiment, so you can always change the initial conditions to ensure the outcomes you desire for each choice.
Oh … and too many feelings. Nothing [is more annoying] than ….
You’re overcomplicating it. Or rather, you are changing the problem.
What about memories?
Kill ’em all, let Cod sort ’em out.
Ugh!. Yes. Clinton is worse if not far worse. But I hate Trump as well so very, very much. Why can’t I just not vote for either? Why does a “none of the above” vote have to equal a vote for Clinton? A vote for Trump is still a vote for Trump. I can’t live with either action. I don’t believe MY vote really matters. The rest of you, do what you gotta do. I wont judge. Just return that favor.
I realize that about a thought experiment. What I’m trying to get at is that we reason with our whole minds, and have difficulty ignoring our past experience with reality just because someone tells us to. Which is one reason our intuition may balk and “trip is up” even when we’re consciously assenting to a counterintuitive scenario.
There is probably an art to constructing good thought experiments. I know in physics they are genuinely useful.
I’m not saying they’re useless in philosophy, just that flesh and blood regular folks might be onto something when they frustrate the philosophers by seeming unable to accept the premises as stated.
Hmm. Maybe. That explanation seems a little post hoc to me.
I am grateful to Rick Poach for calling attention to the moral distinction between passive assent to an undesirable course of events already in progress and active intervention that aims, or at least hopes, for a less undesirable outcome. I have not seen any prior discussion of this distinction.
As for Waco and who is most culpable for it I am surprised that no one in this thread has mentioned the name of Janet Reno. Nor, for that matter, have I seen much mention of the name Bill Clinton.
For me a key question is: If I vote for candidate C and that candidate wins to what degree do I share ownership in bad decisions that C makes once in office? To ask me to share ownership in Trump’s decisions as president, knowing what I know now about him, is asking too much. Of course, I would say the same about Hillary.
Here’s a litmus test: If Trump had chosen not to run for president but rather to apply for a government job that required a top-secret clearance would he have gotten it? I dare say the answer is, no. If Hillary had applied for one without being married to Bill I dare say she would not have gotten one either. Evan McMullin, as an intelligence officer, already has a clearance. I am far more willing to own a share of the credit, or blame, for his future decisions as president than I am willing own such credit for the decisions of either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Find out the race and gender of each, age, tax history. Put it into an equation and determine what hurts Southern White Men the most and do that. For my professor’s test. Me, I run down Hillary.
With a tank?
I was thinking Wayne’s AMC Gremlin. A Gremlin for a gremlin!
Or Bill Murray’s RV from Stripes. Harold Ramis, deserves more credit than I probably know.