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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2009 : 06:51:19 [Permalink]
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Dave W.
By the way, I'm not surprised that nobody here came up with the third option for scenario B, throwing oneself off the bridge to stop the trolley. Perhaps everyone reading thinks that they're thinner than necessary? |
How about option 4: Pray to god to spare everyone?
In situations involving difficult choices, people are often happy to let someone else make their decisions = essentially do nothing. Would praying be an absolutely moral thing to do? |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2009 : 13:52:21 [Permalink]
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The only way to really do these surveys is to set up the hazardous situations in a series of thousands of real-life experiments. A mere intellectual response to a multiple-choice test is irrelevant, as I think it's most unlikely to reflect the choices people would make when confronted with the reality. Until real tests are done, people shouldn't even bother answering these questions.
The problems in setting up the real tests would center around finding the right volunteers. How easy will it be to successfully recruit legions of suicidal drunks? Or platoons of stone-deaf railroad workers? Or a mob of fat men, all of them big enough to stop trolleys dead in their tracks, yet still easily pushed off bridges?
The difficulties in designing the experiment are mind-boggling. But this is for Science, and it somehow must be done.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/09/2009 13:59:12 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 08/09/2009 : 17:17:28 [Permalink]
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It wouldn't be that hard to fool people with some sort of theatre trick.
You could change the scenraio around to something that could be accomplished with simple props.
Set up a fake lab with 3 rooms.
Room one has 5 people.
Room two has one hidden person.
Room three has your test subject, some fake monitoring equipment, and video cameras and microphones into room one and two.
The test subject is hired to monitor an ongoing experiment, the scenario is this: Room one contains 5 subjects who are volunteering to test a new aerosolized medicine to treat insomnia. You tell the test subject that the room has to be pressurized above atmospheric normal to exactly control the delivered dose of the medicine, so the door to room one can't be opened without explosive decompression occuring which would kill everyone inside. It takes at least an hour to slowly equalize the pressure inside so the door can be opened safely, at least that is what you tell the test subject.
You tell them that room two is empty, and is set to the same pressure as room one, but is sealed off from room one. The purpose of room two is just to hold clean air at a pressure equal to room one so that a set of high powered fans can rapidly exchange the air between the rooms if the drug gets to a dangerous level. You emphasize that this new drug is derived from a neurotoxin that is 100% lethal above a certain concentration.
The test subject has to monitor the level of the drug in the air in room one and vent it into room two if it gets high.
You, obviously, are controlling the data that appears on the monitor screen. So you slowly increase the level of the fake drug on the monitor, then after some period of time goes by (say 2 hours) you make an equipmment malfunction raise the indicated level into the lethal range. At that same moment you que your actor in room two to reveal himself, he could be playing a bum who snuck in to look for a place to sleep or something.
Your test subject has to decide if they kill one to save five.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2009 : 10:15:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
By the way, I'm not surprised that nobody here came up with the third option for scenario B, throwing oneself off the bridge to stop the trolley. Perhaps everyone reading thinks that they're thinner than necessary? 
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I think there are very few who would classify themselves as "Immensely Fat"
Mooner had a good one....good luck shoving him off. Guess you could always say you tried.  |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Moral absolutes?
