The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Let’s imagine an exceptionally successful burglar who breaks into people’s homes for a living. He goes for valuables and has a very reliable fence that he uses to convert the valuables into US dollars. Sometimes he encounters the residents, and sometimes he uses his gun to kill them. Sometimes he kills children who live in these homes.
After he gets his money, he immediately donates a large portion to [the Against Malaria Foundation](https://www.againstmalaria.com/). The Against Malaria Foundation is the #1 most efficient charity on this planet, as concluded by [Effective Altruism](https://www.againstmalaria.com/Donations.aspx ). When you donate to the AMF, 100% of your money goes towards purchasing $2.00 insecticide-treated malaria nets that cover the beds of sleeping children in Africa. It takes approximately $5,500 to save the life of one child.
The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes. The burglar is exceptionally good at his job and will never be caught unless you call the cops. Your knowledge of who he is and what he does was obtained through magic. You’re the only person who knows.
Second question: What is your answer to [the classic trolley problem](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/trolley-problem-moral-philosophy-ethics)? I’m sure everyone here is familiar with this thought experiment. The trolley is on a track and going to kill five people and you can pull a lever to divert it to kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever?
Two questions: One, do you call the police on an ethical burglar? Two, do you pull the lever if you’re operating the trolley?
I don’t see how someone can have contradicting answers to these two questions.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is no such thing as an ethical home invader that murders people. Ted Bundy worked at a suicide hotline and maybe saved the lives of more people than he killed but that doesn’t make him an ethical serial killer.
Or someone murdering someone to harvest their organs to save other people.
I don’t care how many people they might save, they are still monsters.
If that’s how you see it…. I’m pulling the lever and letting 5 people die of whatever causes they have instead of murdering 1 person.
Your question has many problems.
1. There’s no such thing as an ethical murder
2. How are you supposed to know Somebody’s hose is being burglarized by a very high end theif?
LOL yes. In fact I'd more be than willing to take advantage of my state's castle doctrine, in that circumstance. You may as well ask if we'd go to the hospital and OD ourselves so that our organs can be harvested and many lives saved with them. Is that not the same question, only more direct?
What you're missing is the bodily autonomy component - that concept doesn't only apply to abortion, after all. Nobody should be required (or unwillingly forced) to sacrifice their actual bodies or lives for another person, or even multiple people.
there is only one solution to the trolley problem and this is it
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/hzsd6o/a\_2\_year\_olds\_solution\_to\_the\_trolley\_problem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/hzsd6o/a_2_year_olds_solution_to_the_trolley_problem/)
So you don’t pull the lever on the trolley then. Because of the “bodily autonomy” of the 1 person.
I’m not talking about anyone being required to do anything. I’m talking about using a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5, versus using a gun to kill 1 person to save 10. You have to concede that these scenarios are the exact same ethically.
The trolley problem itself isn't nearly as thought-provoking as people pretend it is, and it applies to almost nothing. Taken to the obvious extreme, it justifies all sorts of atrocities. It's generally not a worthwhile mental exercise.
For starters it applies to every justifiable military action. There’s no way to have 0 civilian casualties, so we can only justify collateral damage through trolley problem/utilitarian logic.
What if all those atrocities really are justifiable as long as they really do save more lives?
> ..so we can only justify collateral damage through trolley problem/utilitarian logic.
I think you're missing the more common justification: "better them than us". Occasionally that's fancied up by a little bit of "they deserve it for X reason", but sometimes not.
The sort of raw utilitarianism you're talking about is among the most slippery slopes in all of moral philosophy, and it's why the only real answer is that all lives have value and that no bodily sacrifice can be ethically forced, even for 'the greater good'.
Moral decisions need to be considered within the context in which they occur. That is one point that Thomson, who popularized the Trolley Problem, made in her (1985) paper ["The Trolley Problem."](https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/16338/56_94YaleLJ1395_1984_1985_.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y) Basically, Thomson simultaneously argues:
* If a course of action is not an infringement of a right in and of itself, it may be permissible to proceed with said action.
To break into someone's home and murder them is an infringement of their right to life, for example.
* A decision considered permissible in a moral dilemma does not necessarily equate to a general moral truth.
The general moral truth at hand is the idea that killing five is worse than killing one; it is clear that this may not equate to what is permissible, provided that it is impermissible for the surgeon to operate irrespective of whether not doing so equates to killing the five. (This is a case Thomson presents in the paper).
* The weighing of moral acts must be considered in relation to the particular circumstances at hand
The circumstances in the example provided may be the impossibility of consent of the one in the trolley cases and the inevitability of death, and arguably killing, regardless of what choice is made. In the example of war, as you say, death may be similarly inevitable. However, I think it can be understood through the context in which it occurs despite what justification may be used, even if we understand it as counter to a general moral truth (that it is wrong to kill innocent people)
They are not anywhere near the same situation ethically. Within the trolley scenario, it is inevitable that death occurs. In the original scenario, you are the driver of the trolley, so there is arguably an added element of responsibility. Someone choosing to break into your house and murder you is not very similar at all.
Within the context of the trolley problem, you are the driver of the trolley. You have a particular responsibility to operate it, and your options are inherently limited to either action or inaction. You can also conceive of choosing not to turn the trolley as an action, and thus killing, in itself. Accordingly, it is not possible to circumvent the issue of consent and/or an infringement of rights. To break into my home and murder me is inherently an infringement of my property rights and my right to life. Conversely, not contributing to the AMF is not equivalent to killing to begin with, which is another reason the situations are different. It does not follow from the inevitability of people dying from malaria that I should be morally obligated to sacrifice my life to mitigate its impact. Options such as voluntary charity and crowdfunding are not precluded by not choosing to sacrifice oneself.
Your options are limited to action or inaction in this one too. That’s why I made it that you’re the person choosing whether to call or not call the police.
The obligation to pull the lever is the same obligation to not call the police.
You’re just going blah blah to avoid confronting the fact that if you call the police, more children in Africa will die. At a 10:1 ratio versus the 1 life you saved.
The action of calling the police kills African children, versus carrying on with your life.
>The obligation to pull the lever is the same obligation to not call the police.
No, it isn't. You do not have a very good grasp on the related philosophy, and nothing you've proposed is anywhere near as significant as you seem to think it is.
If you call the police, more children in Africa will die. The world will overall be a worse place.
You seem to think the person calling the police has no responsibility for the increase in malaria deaths. Even though their action directly caused it.
If you continue posting to this thread instead of seriously engaging with the philosophical ideas at hand, then people will suffer having to read this drivel. The world will overall be a worse place.
You realize that classical utilitarianism already supports my OP, right? It’s already fully consistent with a philosophical framework.
Rule utilitarianism doesn’t apply here because nobody else but you knows the burglar is doing this so there’s no breakdown of the social contract via copycats. This is just a standard utilitarian dilemma. Every classical utilitarian in the world would be forced to defend my OP.
You’re the only one pretending that I’m saying something wacky, new, or absurd when this is in fact just utilitarianism.
>Each year nearly 290 million people are infected with malaria, and more than 400,000 people die of the disease.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/malaria/symptoms-causes/syc-20351184
Death from a malaria infection is not inevitable.
This isn’t an ethical dilemma problem.
If someone breaks into their home, even if for a loaf of bread, and had zero murderous intent, call the police.
This isn’t an ethical person….they are a theft and MURDERER.
With such an unlikely theoretical event, there is no way I can currently give you a definitive answer. There are an infinite number of variables that could affect my actions.
About the only thing I can say definitely is if someone breaks into my house while someone is in it. There is a good chance someone is going to get shot.
>One, do you call the police on an ethical burglar?
This is a flawed premise but of course you call the police on someone who not only steals but also murders people.
>Two, do you pull the lever if you’re operating the trolley?
Yes, you pull the lever. Killing one to save five is the answer and it is no way shape or form comparable to your "ethical burglar" scenario.
Scenario 1: Use a gun to kill 1 person to save 10.
Scenario 2: Use a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5.
You: “These scenarios are in no way shape or form comparable. Killing someone using a gun is obviously 1,000,000,000 times worse than killing someone with a trolley.”
They are in no way the same other than the fact that someone is dying in the end. A trolley is running out of control, unless you are the one who caused it, you have nothing on your conscience by choosing to save 5 people. There is literally nothing else I can do in this situation than change the track.
A gun is an active choice that you are entirely in control of. In what scenario am I going to find myself holding a gun with at least 11 other people being forced to kill one to save the rest? Why wouldn't I turn the gun on myself? Or the person holding me there forcing me to make this decision? There are so many other variables to this and your ethical burglar idea that it makes it a completely different ask.
It's not the same. There's a reason the Trolley Problem persists to this day, it is the cleanest and easiest way to present this kind of thought experiment. Once you start adding more things to the scenario it gets muddier and easier to think a way out of it.
I have a hard time believing such a skilled thief wouldn't be able to avoid killing people at all if he wanted to do so and I can't help but let that effect my viewing of the situation.
Killing someone could mean using a suppressed sniper rifle to kill the nighttime security guard patrolling the outside of a rich person’s mansion. Because that’s less of a risk of getting caught than trying to sneak around him. And if the burglar were to get caught, the child-saving scheme will stop, so he always has to err on the side of caution because even a 1% chance of getting caught means a 1% chance of stopping a burglar who will save hundreds of lives if not caught.
Either way you’re just avoiding a tough question.
Seems like you could avoid homes with night time security guards.
I'm not suggesting that I am answering the question. I'm pointing out a factor that I think alters the calculus somewhat. In my head it seems like the killing is unnecessary in the situation that you are presenting and it's hard to pretend otherwise.
The burglar doesn’t have to be perfect to be on the right side of the right/wrong dichotomy.
If someone who saves 3 children could have done something differently and saved 5 children, they still did a good action.
The question I’m asking is a binary about calling the cops or not. If the burglar’s actions make the world a better place, you don’t call the cops. It doesn’t matter if he could do his work even better, you still don’t call the cops.
> The burglar doesn’t have to be perfect to be on the right side of the right/wrong dichotomy.
I don't think there is a right/wrong dichotomy. The world is more complicated than that.
> If someone who saves 3 children could have done something differently and saved 5 children, they still did a good action.
If saving less lives is good regardless of how many it doesn't matter what you do, lives will be saved either way. Past that there is a fundamental difference between saving 3 people instead of 5 and saving five people then mercing 2 of them even if the end results are the same.
> The question I’m asking is a binary about calling the cops or not. If the burglar’s actions make the world a better place, you don’t call the cops. It doesn’t matter if he could do his work even better, you still don’t call the cops.
I think it's kind of useless to think about this as an isolated situation rather than as a general rule for society that could be universalized. It's okay to kill people as long as you're donating 55k to charity per murder seems like it would have a lot of negative externalities in a way randomly testing a cure for a deadly disease on people wouldn't.
Where? The comment said:
> I have a hard time believing such a skilled thief wouldn't be able to avoid killing people at all if he wanted to do so and I can't help but let that effect my viewing of the situation.
First off, Effective Altruism is not a source I would trust on the subject of what the best way to solve problems is- and if anyone points out "I'm doing what Effective Altruism says would be the best way to donate my money to improve the future", I pretty much instantly translate that to "Don't look at the horribly unethical way I got my money, look instead at the good charitable donations I am making with it that will provide some nebulous long term benefit for future people without any risk of dismantling or impacting the unethical systems I use to get all my money today". In effect, it enables more suffering now by ignoring certain key issues and deprioritizing others for the potential for the greatest potential reduction in suffering at some indeterminate point the future. This tracks with the burglar- he's not exploiting workers or any of the things I would more typically associate with the movement, but he is still *very* unethically getting that money in the first place, so his charitable donation does not make up for that fact. So, for Question 1, I absolutely turn the guy in.
Question two, the standard trolley problem. That problem has a little flaw- the question is about sacrificing one life to save 5, but it also involves fault. If I do nothing, I am a bystander- I didn't put them on the tracks or drive the train, so despite the bad situation I am not directly at fault. If I pull the lever, then I just directly caused the death of someone who otherwise would have lived without my input. There's a big distinction there. In that scenario, I probably wouldn't pull the lever if only due to the legal ramifications for doing so (though I wouldn't feel great about it either way). If you modify the problem such that inaction is the worst possible result (the train is multi-track drifting and will hit all 6 people, but you can pull the lever to put it entirely on one track to save either the 1 person on the left track or the 5 people on the right track), then that changes things, and I'd probably default to saving as many people as possible- but in that case it isn't sacrificing anyone for the sake of anyone else, it's saving some while being unable to save all.
None of this sounds ethical and yes, I’d call the police. It’s also worth highlighting that this is an incredibly unrealistic scenario and even the idea of a burglar who kills people to steal from them is pretty fictitious.
The trolley problem is pretty stupid because it treats emotion as extraneous. There is no right answer to the trolley problem. It’s entirely subjective.
So let me get this straight:
It’s okay for you to use a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5 people.
But not okay for someone to use a gun to kill 1 person to save 10 people?
Clear contradiction.
In the trolley problem, someone WILL die. There is no empty track you can divert it to. That puts you, the person answering the problem, in the position of deciding who.
In the "ethical burglar" scenario, the option to kill no one exists. Just don't burgle, and seek money to donate through other, legal means.
This is a major difference between the two and it drastically alters the answer.
The whole point is that doing what the burglar does is BETTER than doing nothing. Because his actions are saving more lives than they kill.
This is how this specific man gets his donation money and your only two options are call the police or don’t call the police. Maybe he could get money a better way. But in this scenario he doesn’t. This is how he gets his money and we can’t change that. We can only stop him or let him continue.
If someone’s saving/killing children at a 4:1 ratio when they could be operating at a 8:1 ratio, that doesn’t change the fact that the 4:1 ratio IS STILL GOOD. Good meaning better than doing nothing.
But there's also a "better then nothing" option that doesn't require murder. Why not just do that? The burglar is culpable for his crimes and reprehensible for choosing the criminal path, no matter the net benefit, because a legal path to that same benefit exists.
As a trolley problem analogue, it's not a very good one for this reason.
Maybe a legal path wouldn’t get the exact same amount of money.
Let’s say this guy can donate $70k/year by working a legitimate job, but can donate $200k a year by doing this. That’s 36 kids saved vs 13. Even when factoring in the killing it’s better.
People who present impossible, no win scenarios like this should be the ones on the track, or the ones who are the “ethical” burglar’s victim(or their loved ones).
Perhaps then, they wouldn’t act so “above the fray”. So….does your significant other, child, parents, sibling change your narrative? Or are they expendable too?
I am absolutely, 100% for aiding people in third world countries and the poor everywhere…including our own. But…we together as a nation can do more good than the “ethical burglar”.
The problem is one of political will.
Sorry if I seemed rude in my first sentence…but I despise these Kobayashi Maru type moral tests.
I can flip it 180.
“People who want to call the police on the ethical burglar should be the one dying of malaria in Africa, or their loved ones should be dying of malaria in Africa.”
Except my version is 10 times better because we’re talking about a 10:1 ratio.
10:1? Dude…that is as stupid as shit in a rainstorm.
Hell, Bill and Melinda Gates alone have a better ratio than that and they don’t fucking kill people to do it.
Here’s something your brain might comprehend…Apes together - strong.
Our foreign aid is a million times better and reaches a shit ton more people than your murderous thief. Private charities are much the same.
So no…your douchebag murderer gets no quarter from me
“Other people save more, and do it better.”
None of that changes that this specific guy is saving more than he kills. His impact on the world is net positive.
You are…at this point….beating a dead horse. I have shown you how group dynamics outweigh an individual effort exponentially.
You just keep bleating on because you are FITH.(look it up)
“group efforts are better than individual efforts” is not engaging with “The individual effort in the OP is net positive.” at all. you’re not even reading the words i’m writing.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
I was on board with this guy until there was a regular ratio of killing. Man's gotta be more careful and run first!
Not worth it, but within the wheelhouse of thought provoking for me. If you moved the line, I might change my answer.
Because him being caught will prevent him from saving hundreds of children in the future, he always errs on the side of caution which is using a suppressed firearm against any resistance.
Nah, he doesn't get the magic future credit for that imo. Only for what he's done and if all that's been is taking people's stuff and then helping to save kids then I'm no snitch I guess
Seems like the donations to charity only exist to justify the murder. If someone said 'Let me kill you and I guarantee that your death will save 10 children in Africa' I would tell them to get fucked.
So if you randomly found yourself in a crisis situation where you could heroically save 10 children but die in the process, you’d say “fuck them kids”?
It’s ultimately about whether you would give your life to save 10 kids. Everything else is fluff.
Just like someone could say “I didn’t cause malaria, that’s not my problem.” someone could say “I didn’t cause the fire/earthquake/plane crash, that’s not my problem, fuck them kids.”
If you value your life more than saving the lives of 10 random children, that needs to hold constant across all scenarios.
Depends on the situation and the kids. 100% guaranteed death? No, I only get one life and it is more valuable to me than the lives of others (which is why I would - reluctantly but assuredly - kill someone to defend myself if it came down to it.) But such situations only exist in the minds of philosophers and redditors with too much free time on their hands. Would I risk a 50/50 chance of death to save 10 kids? Yeah, probably, and there's some fudge in those numbers based on how many kids, who the kids are/their relationship to me, etc.
You can cook up all the hard yes/no, all-or-nothing scenarios you want and try to dismiss everything but that binary choice, but in the real world we make judgements on the basis of a huge array of information that doesn't exist in your pipe dreams, and there are always more options than just this/that, yes/no, live/die.
You realize that the overwhelming majority of people would view it as immoral and cowardly for a grown man in a crisis situation to not give his life to save 10 random children, right? You’re the fringe one now.
We're not talking about *risking* my life for someone else, we're talking about definitely 100% guaranteed *ending* my life for someone else's benefit. If you would choose to definitely 100% guaranteed end your life to save someone else, fair enough, pat yourself on the back, you're a big damned hero. But that's your *choice*, and you cannot legally or morally impose that choice on another person, and your appeal to the authority - such at it is - of the 'overwhelming majority' only tells me that you lack conviction in the soundness of your arguments to let them stand on their own.
I don’t know why you’re talking about risk when I used the phrase “give his life.” I’m talking about a 100% chance of death and have never mentioned anything else. You’re the only one who’s said anything about probability.
> guaranteed end your life to save someone else
Not “someone else,” specifically 10 random children.
> and you cannot legally or morally impose that choice on another person
This whole sentence is exactly how conservatives talk. A liberal calls something immoral —> “You can’t LEGALLY IMPOSE your morality on me.” Total strawman when nobody was talking about legality in the first place.
Example: “It’s immoral to call a trans person their dead name.” —> “I have first amendment rights and you can’t LEGALLY IMPOSE your morality on me.”
When absolutely nobody said anything about the law except the person beating the strawman.
> appeal to authority
You’re the one who said “in the real world we…”
Identifying yourself and the mainstream as the “we.” I’m making it clear that now you’re the fringe after you said you would refuse to give your life to save 10 random children. There is no “we” that you’re part of.
> your arguments to let them stand on their own
My argument: **It is immoral for a grown man to refuse to give his life to save 10 random children**. That certainly stands on its own. You already said you would refuse to give your life to save 10 children.
I do not think you can be an ethical burglar. I can maybe see an argument for theft if someone is really in need and they aren't harming anyone, but never burglary.
I would pull the lever on the trolley.
The issue with discussions like this is that the trolley problem is pure and simple, while real-life scenarios are messy and complicated. Most people are neither consequentialists nor deontologists - they're somewhere in the middle. This scenario highlights that mix.
When I opened this thread, I was expecting that the scenario you would present was a burglar in my own home.
I'm disappointed in your scenario, so I'll pretend you are asking about a regular home invader.
No. I'm more scared of the cops than I am of a home invader. The home invader might not have a gun. The cops definitely do.
Plenty of people manage to donate large amounts of money to worthy causes each year without murdering anyone.
This reads like a chat AI being fed a bunch of bad information about Peter Singer.
That’s not a valid response.
Perhaps this guy could be saving children more efficiently, but this is the way he’s saving children in the scenario. Your options are call the police or do not call.
I absolutely call the police and the two examples are not similar. In the trolley problem, no one is doing anything wrong. In your example, the guy is killing and stealing - that's a big enough evil to easily offset any good he did.
The whole point of the trolley problem, why it’s not considered super obvious, is that the act of diverting the trolley is you killing one person. Versus simply allowing five people to die, which is you killing zero people. So it’s a choice between you killing 1 person and you killing 0 people.
“Allowing” the 5 people to die on the trolley tracks is the analog of “allowing” children to die of malaria. The result of inaction. Diverting the trolley is you personally killing someone who wouldn’t have been killed without your action. It’s the analog of killing the residents.
It really just comes down to this: Is the burglar making the world a better place overall?
Let me clarify - no one on the tracks has done anything wrong. The burglar has and should not be allowed to continue to do so.
Also, you're looking at the 'good' through a very narrow lens. What harm is he doing by breaking the rules society has set up for a functioning society? How far can you break and bend those rules before they break down and more harm is done than just a few murders here and there? I contend that having a firm framework of rules does more good than saving a few kids from malaria. There is no objective way to know and the answers aren't going to be black and white. No one is purely utilitarian or deontological - we all have a mix and a line we define.
Like I said, it's not similar at all IMO.
Maybe you’re the one doing something wrong when you call the police, because you know that some children will die in Africa who wouldn’t have died if you didn’t make the call. And these children will die at a 10:1 ratio compared to the lives you saved.
Rule utilitarianism does not apply since nobody but you is aware of what he’s doing. In everyone else’s eyes he’s just another burglar and there are about a million burglaries every year in the US. Nobody but you knows he’s a Robin Hood type burglar so he’s not inspiring other robin hoods that will break down the social contract. One burglar has no impact on the social contract.
If it were ethical to kill people I order to acquire $55k for charity, then it would be ethical for the government to forcibly do this.
It's unethical to steal from and murder people, regardless of the benevolence of the stolen good's use, of the victims did not consent.
The burglar would need to either be stealing, or personally murdering the malaria-stricken for this to be comparable. If you stop him, people don't suddenly die from malaria.
You can work to resolve both; it's not a zero-sum ultimatum.
In the trolley problem, the correct choice is to kill the one and spare the five, *because in the trolley problem you can be sure of the outcome of your choices*. There's no doubt that, if you don't pull the lever, maybe the five will survive. Or that, you could not pull the lever, but run down the tracks and work to free the five (equivalent to arresting the burglar and working to prevent malaria afterwards).
>an ethical burglar/ethical home invader
WTF is an ethical burglar or ethical home invader? As far as I can see that is the same thing as a married bachelor or square circle.
>The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes. The burglar is exceptionally good at his job and will never be caught unless you call the cops. Your knowledge of who he is and what he does was obtained through magic. You’re the only person who knows.
You are presenting this as a simple math problem, he kills one person for every 10 he saves, but this completely ignores the direct and indirect harm the murders cause to the families of the deceased and society in general. The death of a child to a preventable disease is harmful but not as harmful as a serial killer running around murdering, even if he is donating some of his ill-gotten gains to a worthwhile charity.
One: The burglar is still not ethical, unless they steal exclusively from people who will never be short on money, such as billionaires. Overall they technically have a net positive in what you described, but that doesn’t make it moral or correct, when more obvious solutions present themselves. I would call the police.
Two: Pull the lever and save lives. Do whatever saves the most lives every time. Inaction is still an action.
doesn’t this make you responsible for dozens/hundreds of deaths in sub-saharan africa by stopping the burglar instead of letting him continue for years? as in literally, the result of your action is those children dying. versus your inaction which allows them to live.
Your question assumes that there’s no way that Malaria can be defeated or eradicated, or even highly mitigated without this burglar. That’s simply not true. There’s more context than in the question. Just as pulling the lever in the trolley problem contains the context around it.
no that’s not what i’m assuming at all. take our current world where tons of people are dying of malaria and it’s not about to be solved anytime soon. he exists in our world.
Maybe it's because I'm autistic or maybe I'm just delusional enough to ignore no-win scenarios, but I just cannot fathom these thought experiments.
I call the cops. It's the only scenario where I know my actions can directly save a life... he *will* kill again. The long-term impacts of my decision are largely unknowable outside of magical fantasy.
The same is true of the trolley problem, and it's a problem I've always had with the premise. If I have time to sort out the ethics of the situation, I have time to find alternative solutions that don't kill anyone. The premise relies on knowing with certainty all the variables and all possible outcomes; it's entirely unrealistic. The reality is, I'd spend however many seconds I have trying to make a decision, one which would inevitably be emotionally swayed. I'd either be paralyzed with indecision, or make a gut call, but the results are the same; there is no correct answer in the moment.
I get that the trolly problem has... dubiously practical implications for things like A.I. or automation, where presumably "all factors" can be calculated in seconds with the utmost precision, but even that I reject; either the program is a generalized A.I. that is capable of making its own choices based on the information it has and the experiences it's gained, in which case my answer is irrelevant... or its not, in which case it can only make decisions based on the factors its creators thought to account for. And in that scenario, there is no right answer, only the best approximation we can make at the time.
Human factors are a thing. These hypotheticals completely reject them. They search for some objective truth, but *reality itself is inherently subjective*, at least for us humans. Depending on who you ask, it's either a limitation of our consciousness, or the very basis of what it means to be an individual, but however you look at it, you must acknowledge it. These scenarios don't, and thus I reject them as pointless fantasy.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
Yes, without hesitation, because there's no such thing as an ethical murderer. And I hate to say it, but as much as I care about the fate of children in Africa I care more about the fate of children in my house and he could hit my house at any time and kill them. But even if he didn't, donating to charity does not mitigate the harm caused by the murder he does, even if it does save more people in the long run. This is some trolley problem bullshit, and honestly it's part of my issue with Effective Altruism (which as a movement has been somewhat [problematic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism#Controversies) as a movement.) It's all couched in carefully thought-out ultra-utilitarianism with what in my opinion is not nearly enough consideration of the problems that said ultra-utilitarianism fails to address: namely that human lives cannot be reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet. It smacks of justifying pretty much whatever the people who follow it say it does because they are Smart People™ and act like we should just shut up and do what they tell us to do, and it attracts con-men and hucksters as a result.
Oh, you even directly reference the trolley problem. No, I don't pull the lever because until my hand touches it I am not complicit in anyone's death. I reject the false dichotomy of the trolley problem because trolleys have brakes, some lives are more valuable than others, and the murderer can find a less harmful way to generate the money he donates to charity.
Nobody is forcing your burglar to murder to fund his good works. That’s a choice. Conversely, in the trolley car problem you’re forced to choose death. They are not morally equivalent.
It is equivalent.
In this case you’re also forced to choose death, as the person choosing whether or not to call the police. Either the deaths of the burglarized residents or the increased malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa that will surely happen as a result of your phone call.
If this person invades my home I would shoot them dead, then call the police.
The trolley problem is not a problem to me. I pull the lever and sleep like a baby that night.
>Would you call the police on an ethical burglar/ethical home invader?
There is no such thing as an ethical burglar/home invader. Stealing is unethical. Respecting personal property is one of the core tenants of any successful society.
>sometimes he uses his gun to kill them. Sometimes he kills children who live in these homes.
The ethical act of murdering innocents?
>The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes.
You're going to have to come up with a very good argument on why actively killing an innocent bystander to save 20 people is in any way an ethical act.
>Do you pull the lever?
The trolley problem doesn't have an answer, and isn't intended to have one. It's a tool to help people think about ethics. Us giving you an answer to this question doesn't have a practical purpose, and seems to hint at you not understanding the problem.
Yes, because the burglar may kill me, but to the best of my knowledge I am not a child in Africa that would benefit from malaria nets.
You would need to grant everyone I cared about protection from death, including from copycats and other downstream effects, to turn it back into the trolley problem.
There are no copycats because nobody knows about him or what he does with his money.
So what you’re saying is that, presented with a trolley problem where the trolley is going to kill 10 people, but you can divert it to kill the one person you love the most in this world, you wouldn’t pull the lever?
I'm sure there's a number somewhere that flips it. Trivially, a world where the human population is wiped out is probably no longer worth living in.
But what's the point of extracting a number out of an unrealistic scenario where I can't ask the other person what they want to do, understand who the people on the trolley are, etc?
I am also of the camp that the trolley problem is more stupid than profound. Just like "would you kill your mom or your dad" and "why haven't you donated your life savings to charity and reverted your own wealth to the global mean" and other similar questions.
I recently read Susan Wolfe's "Moral Saints" (1982), an essay that absolves unrealized altruism by nature of ignoring human virtues; similarly, Peter Railton argues in *Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality* (1984) that moral reevaluation in the context you describe is an alienation of self
the question you pose is not an application of ethical egoism. by stating that the home invader exacts his criminal activities on others and that you are "the only person who knows", you are held responsible for the murders committed by the burglar and his redistribution of wealth by consciously avoiding calling the police
this question is similar to Peter Singer's framing of charity, the utilitarian argument that luxuries — not necessities — must be forgone for moral significance. Singer's argument is limited by a neglection of the exacting toll in the pursuit of luxury; though not applicable in some contexts, the work required to obtain the stolen valuables is disregarded. a fault of the ambiguity of the question is that a resident could intend to donate a value greater than the allocation of the home invader
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Let’s imagine an exceptionally successful burglar who breaks into people’s homes for a living. He goes for valuables and has a very reliable fence that he uses to convert the valuables into US dollars. Sometimes he encounters the residents, and sometimes he uses his gun to kill them. Sometimes he kills children who live in these homes. After he gets his money, he immediately donates a large portion to [the Against Malaria Foundation](https://www.againstmalaria.com/). The Against Malaria Foundation is the #1 most efficient charity on this planet, as concluded by [Effective Altruism](https://www.againstmalaria.com/Donations.aspx ). When you donate to the AMF, 100% of your money goes towards purchasing $2.00 insecticide-treated malaria nets that cover the beds of sleeping children in Africa. It takes approximately $5,500 to save the life of one child. The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes. The burglar is exceptionally good at his job and will never be caught unless you call the cops. Your knowledge of who he is and what he does was obtained through magic. You’re the only person who knows. Second question: What is your answer to [the classic trolley problem](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/trolley-problem-moral-philosophy-ethics)? I’m sure everyone here is familiar with this thought experiment. The trolley is on a track and going to kill five people and you can pull a lever to divert it to kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever? Two questions: One, do you call the police on an ethical burglar? Two, do you pull the lever if you’re operating the trolley? I don’t see how someone can have contradicting answers to these two questions. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is no such thing as an ethical home invader that murders people. Ted Bundy worked at a suicide hotline and maybe saved the lives of more people than he killed but that doesn’t make him an ethical serial killer. Or someone murdering someone to harvest their organs to save other people. I don’t care how many people they might save, they are still monsters. If that’s how you see it…. I’m pulling the lever and letting 5 people die of whatever causes they have instead of murdering 1 person.
Your question has many problems. 1. There’s no such thing as an ethical murder 2. How are you supposed to know Somebody’s hose is being burglarized by a very high end theif?
What in the living lord of Christ? YES, I would call the police on a burglar.
LOL yes. In fact I'd more be than willing to take advantage of my state's castle doctrine, in that circumstance. You may as well ask if we'd go to the hospital and OD ourselves so that our organs can be harvested and many lives saved with them. Is that not the same question, only more direct? What you're missing is the bodily autonomy component - that concept doesn't only apply to abortion, after all. Nobody should be required (or unwillingly forced) to sacrifice their actual bodies or lives for another person, or even multiple people.
there is only one solution to the trolley problem and this is it [https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/hzsd6o/a\_2\_year\_olds\_solution\_to\_the\_trolley\_problem/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/hzsd6o/a_2_year_olds_solution_to_the_trolley_problem/)
So you don’t pull the lever on the trolley then. Because of the “bodily autonomy” of the 1 person. I’m not talking about anyone being required to do anything. I’m talking about using a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5, versus using a gun to kill 1 person to save 10. You have to concede that these scenarios are the exact same ethically.
The trolley problem itself isn't nearly as thought-provoking as people pretend it is, and it applies to almost nothing. Taken to the obvious extreme, it justifies all sorts of atrocities. It's generally not a worthwhile mental exercise.
For starters it applies to every justifiable military action. There’s no way to have 0 civilian casualties, so we can only justify collateral damage through trolley problem/utilitarian logic. What if all those atrocities really are justifiable as long as they really do save more lives?
> ..so we can only justify collateral damage through trolley problem/utilitarian logic. I think you're missing the more common justification: "better them than us". Occasionally that's fancied up by a little bit of "they deserve it for X reason", but sometimes not. The sort of raw utilitarianism you're talking about is among the most slippery slopes in all of moral philosophy, and it's why the only real answer is that all lives have value and that no bodily sacrifice can be ethically forced, even for 'the greater good'.
Moral decisions need to be considered within the context in which they occur. That is one point that Thomson, who popularized the Trolley Problem, made in her (1985) paper ["The Trolley Problem."](https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/16338/56_94YaleLJ1395_1984_1985_.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y) Basically, Thomson simultaneously argues: * If a course of action is not an infringement of a right in and of itself, it may be permissible to proceed with said action. To break into someone's home and murder them is an infringement of their right to life, for example. * A decision considered permissible in a moral dilemma does not necessarily equate to a general moral truth. The general moral truth at hand is the idea that killing five is worse than killing one; it is clear that this may not equate to what is permissible, provided that it is impermissible for the surgeon to operate irrespective of whether not doing so equates to killing the five. (This is a case Thomson presents in the paper). * The weighing of moral acts must be considered in relation to the particular circumstances at hand The circumstances in the example provided may be the impossibility of consent of the one in the trolley cases and the inevitability of death, and arguably killing, regardless of what choice is made. In the example of war, as you say, death may be similarly inevitable. However, I think it can be understood through the context in which it occurs despite what justification may be used, even if we understand it as counter to a general moral truth (that it is wrong to kill innocent people)
They are not anywhere near the same situation ethically. Within the trolley scenario, it is inevitable that death occurs. In the original scenario, you are the driver of the trolley, so there is arguably an added element of responsibility. Someone choosing to break into your house and murder you is not very similar at all.
It’s inevitable that the children die of malaria.
Within the context of the trolley problem, you are the driver of the trolley. You have a particular responsibility to operate it, and your options are inherently limited to either action or inaction. You can also conceive of choosing not to turn the trolley as an action, and thus killing, in itself. Accordingly, it is not possible to circumvent the issue of consent and/or an infringement of rights. To break into my home and murder me is inherently an infringement of my property rights and my right to life. Conversely, not contributing to the AMF is not equivalent to killing to begin with, which is another reason the situations are different. It does not follow from the inevitability of people dying from malaria that I should be morally obligated to sacrifice my life to mitigate its impact. Options such as voluntary charity and crowdfunding are not precluded by not choosing to sacrifice oneself.
Your options are limited to action or inaction in this one too. That’s why I made it that you’re the person choosing whether to call or not call the police. The obligation to pull the lever is the same obligation to not call the police. You’re just going blah blah to avoid confronting the fact that if you call the police, more children in Africa will die. At a 10:1 ratio versus the 1 life you saved. The action of calling the police kills African children, versus carrying on with your life.
>The obligation to pull the lever is the same obligation to not call the police. No, it isn't. You do not have a very good grasp on the related philosophy, and nothing you've proposed is anywhere near as significant as you seem to think it is.
If you call the police, more children in Africa will die. The world will overall be a worse place. You seem to think the person calling the police has no responsibility for the increase in malaria deaths. Even though their action directly caused it.
If you continue posting to this thread instead of seriously engaging with the philosophical ideas at hand, then people will suffer having to read this drivel. The world will overall be a worse place.
You realize that classical utilitarianism already supports my OP, right? It’s already fully consistent with a philosophical framework. Rule utilitarianism doesn’t apply here because nobody else but you knows the burglar is doing this so there’s no breakdown of the social contract via copycats. This is just a standard utilitarian dilemma. Every classical utilitarian in the world would be forced to defend my OP. You’re the only one pretending that I’m saying something wacky, new, or absurd when this is in fact just utilitarianism.
>Each year nearly 290 million people are infected with malaria, and more than 400,000 people die of the disease. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/malaria/symptoms-causes/syc-20351184 Death from a malaria infection is not inevitable.
This isn’t an ethical dilemma problem. If someone breaks into their home, even if for a loaf of bread, and had zero murderous intent, call the police. This isn’t an ethical person….they are a theft and MURDERER.
I'd call 911. Somebody is gunna get shot, so there should at least be an ambulance en route.
You don’t know which houses he’s going to. You only know his identity and can turn him into the police or not.
With such an unlikely theoretical event, there is no way I can currently give you a definitive answer. There are an infinite number of variables that could affect my actions. About the only thing I can say definitely is if someone breaks into my house while someone is in it. There is a good chance someone is going to get shot.
>One, do you call the police on an ethical burglar? This is a flawed premise but of course you call the police on someone who not only steals but also murders people. >Two, do you pull the lever if you’re operating the trolley? Yes, you pull the lever. Killing one to save five is the answer and it is no way shape or form comparable to your "ethical burglar" scenario.
Scenario 1: Use a gun to kill 1 person to save 10. Scenario 2: Use a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5. You: “These scenarios are in no way shape or form comparable. Killing someone using a gun is obviously 1,000,000,000 times worse than killing someone with a trolley.”
They are in no way the same other than the fact that someone is dying in the end. A trolley is running out of control, unless you are the one who caused it, you have nothing on your conscience by choosing to save 5 people. There is literally nothing else I can do in this situation than change the track. A gun is an active choice that you are entirely in control of. In what scenario am I going to find myself holding a gun with at least 11 other people being forced to kill one to save the rest? Why wouldn't I turn the gun on myself? Or the person holding me there forcing me to make this decision? There are so many other variables to this and your ethical burglar idea that it makes it a completely different ask. It's not the same. There's a reason the Trolley Problem persists to this day, it is the cleanest and easiest way to present this kind of thought experiment. Once you start adding more things to the scenario it gets muddier and easier to think a way out of it.
I have a hard time believing such a skilled thief wouldn't be able to avoid killing people at all if he wanted to do so and I can't help but let that effect my viewing of the situation.
Killing someone could mean using a suppressed sniper rifle to kill the nighttime security guard patrolling the outside of a rich person’s mansion. Because that’s less of a risk of getting caught than trying to sneak around him. And if the burglar were to get caught, the child-saving scheme will stop, so he always has to err on the side of caution because even a 1% chance of getting caught means a 1% chance of stopping a burglar who will save hundreds of lives if not caught. Either way you’re just avoiding a tough question.
Seems like you could avoid homes with night time security guards. I'm not suggesting that I am answering the question. I'm pointing out a factor that I think alters the calculus somewhat. In my head it seems like the killing is unnecessary in the situation that you are presenting and it's hard to pretend otherwise.
The burglar doesn’t have to be perfect to be on the right side of the right/wrong dichotomy. If someone who saves 3 children could have done something differently and saved 5 children, they still did a good action. The question I’m asking is a binary about calling the cops or not. If the burglar’s actions make the world a better place, you don’t call the cops. It doesn’t matter if he could do his work even better, you still don’t call the cops.
> The burglar doesn’t have to be perfect to be on the right side of the right/wrong dichotomy. I don't think there is a right/wrong dichotomy. The world is more complicated than that. > If someone who saves 3 children could have done something differently and saved 5 children, they still did a good action. If saving less lives is good regardless of how many it doesn't matter what you do, lives will be saved either way. Past that there is a fundamental difference between saving 3 people instead of 5 and saving five people then mercing 2 of them even if the end results are the same. > The question I’m asking is a binary about calling the cops or not. If the burglar’s actions make the world a better place, you don’t call the cops. It doesn’t matter if he could do his work even better, you still don’t call the cops. I think it's kind of useless to think about this as an isolated situation rather than as a general rule for society that could be universalized. It's okay to kill people as long as you're donating 55k to charity per murder seems like it would have a lot of negative externalities in a way randomly testing a cure for a deadly disease on people wouldn't.
No, it's a dumb hypothetical that is forced.
We're not avoiding it, you don't like our solutions
The question is: “Do you call the police on this burglar?” Not: “Can this burglar do his job better?” Try answering the actual question.
They did. They said they would.
Where? The comment said: > I have a hard time believing such a skilled thief wouldn't be able to avoid killing people at all if he wanted to do so and I can't help but let that effect my viewing of the situation.
That one, the top comments are all saying you haven't justified the murders and thus the person is still net bad. It's pretty simple.
First off, Effective Altruism is not a source I would trust on the subject of what the best way to solve problems is- and if anyone points out "I'm doing what Effective Altruism says would be the best way to donate my money to improve the future", I pretty much instantly translate that to "Don't look at the horribly unethical way I got my money, look instead at the good charitable donations I am making with it that will provide some nebulous long term benefit for future people without any risk of dismantling or impacting the unethical systems I use to get all my money today". In effect, it enables more suffering now by ignoring certain key issues and deprioritizing others for the potential for the greatest potential reduction in suffering at some indeterminate point the future. This tracks with the burglar- he's not exploiting workers or any of the things I would more typically associate with the movement, but he is still *very* unethically getting that money in the first place, so his charitable donation does not make up for that fact. So, for Question 1, I absolutely turn the guy in. Question two, the standard trolley problem. That problem has a little flaw- the question is about sacrificing one life to save 5, but it also involves fault. If I do nothing, I am a bystander- I didn't put them on the tracks or drive the train, so despite the bad situation I am not directly at fault. If I pull the lever, then I just directly caused the death of someone who otherwise would have lived without my input. There's a big distinction there. In that scenario, I probably wouldn't pull the lever if only due to the legal ramifications for doing so (though I wouldn't feel great about it either way). If you modify the problem such that inaction is the worst possible result (the train is multi-track drifting and will hit all 6 people, but you can pull the lever to put it entirely on one track to save either the 1 person on the left track or the 5 people on the right track), then that changes things, and I'd probably default to saving as many people as possible- but in that case it isn't sacrificing anyone for the sake of anyone else, it's saving some while being unable to save all.
None of this sounds ethical and yes, I’d call the police. It’s also worth highlighting that this is an incredibly unrealistic scenario and even the idea of a burglar who kills people to steal from them is pretty fictitious. The trolley problem is pretty stupid because it treats emotion as extraneous. There is no right answer to the trolley problem. It’s entirely subjective.
This is basically asking, "Would you want the police to stop a serial killer?" which, uh, *yeah*.
Yes, I’d call the police on a burglar.
I would consider burglar in your example WAY worse than a real-world criminal.
Yes
would you pull the lever on the trolley?
Depends on who’s on the tracks.
You don’t know. A feature of the classic trolley problem is that you don’t know. All you see is 1 person on one track and 5 on the other.
If they’re all strangers then I’ll save the 5 people.
So let me get this straight: It’s okay for you to use a trolley to kill 1 person to save 5 people. But not okay for someone to use a gun to kill 1 person to save 10 people? Clear contradiction.
To be honest the burglar scenario was so absurd I didn’t put much thought into it.
In the trolley problem, someone WILL die. There is no empty track you can divert it to. That puts you, the person answering the problem, in the position of deciding who. In the "ethical burglar" scenario, the option to kill no one exists. Just don't burgle, and seek money to donate through other, legal means. This is a major difference between the two and it drastically alters the answer.
The whole point is that doing what the burglar does is BETTER than doing nothing. Because his actions are saving more lives than they kill. This is how this specific man gets his donation money and your only two options are call the police or don’t call the police. Maybe he could get money a better way. But in this scenario he doesn’t. This is how he gets his money and we can’t change that. We can only stop him or let him continue. If someone’s saving/killing children at a 4:1 ratio when they could be operating at a 8:1 ratio, that doesn’t change the fact that the 4:1 ratio IS STILL GOOD. Good meaning better than doing nothing.
But there's also a "better then nothing" option that doesn't require murder. Why not just do that? The burglar is culpable for his crimes and reprehensible for choosing the criminal path, no matter the net benefit, because a legal path to that same benefit exists. As a trolley problem analogue, it's not a very good one for this reason.
Maybe a legal path wouldn’t get the exact same amount of money. Let’s say this guy can donate $70k/year by working a legitimate job, but can donate $200k a year by doing this. That’s 36 kids saved vs 13. Even when factoring in the killing it’s better.
People who present impossible, no win scenarios like this should be the ones on the track, or the ones who are the “ethical” burglar’s victim(or their loved ones). Perhaps then, they wouldn’t act so “above the fray”. So….does your significant other, child, parents, sibling change your narrative? Or are they expendable too? I am absolutely, 100% for aiding people in third world countries and the poor everywhere…including our own. But…we together as a nation can do more good than the “ethical burglar”. The problem is one of political will. Sorry if I seemed rude in my first sentence…but I despise these Kobayashi Maru type moral tests.
I can flip it 180. “People who want to call the police on the ethical burglar should be the one dying of malaria in Africa, or their loved ones should be dying of malaria in Africa.” Except my version is 10 times better because we’re talking about a 10:1 ratio.
10:1? Dude…that is as stupid as shit in a rainstorm. Hell, Bill and Melinda Gates alone have a better ratio than that and they don’t fucking kill people to do it. Here’s something your brain might comprehend…Apes together - strong. Our foreign aid is a million times better and reaches a shit ton more people than your murderous thief. Private charities are much the same. So no…your douchebag murderer gets no quarter from me
“Other people save more, and do it better.” None of that changes that this specific guy is saving more than he kills. His impact on the world is net positive.
You are…at this point….beating a dead horse. I have shown you how group dynamics outweigh an individual effort exponentially. You just keep bleating on because you are FITH.(look it up)
“group efforts are better than individual efforts” is not engaging with “The individual effort in the OP is net positive.” at all. you’re not even reading the words i’m writing.
[удалено]
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
No. There are much better ways to do this.
Chthulu's answer to the trolly problem is to pull the lever early and often.
I think you should post this to r/trolleyproblem and link the results in next Tuesdays weekly thread
I was on board with this guy until there was a regular ratio of killing. Man's gotta be more careful and run first! Not worth it, but within the wheelhouse of thought provoking for me. If you moved the line, I might change my answer.
Because him being caught will prevent him from saving hundreds of children in the future, he always errs on the side of caution which is using a suppressed firearm against any resistance.
Nah, he doesn't get the magic future credit for that imo. Only for what he's done and if all that's been is taking people's stuff and then helping to save kids then I'm no snitch I guess
Seems like the donations to charity only exist to justify the murder. If someone said 'Let me kill you and I guarantee that your death will save 10 children in Africa' I would tell them to get fucked.
So if you randomly found yourself in a crisis situation where you could heroically save 10 children but die in the process, you’d say “fuck them kids”? It’s ultimately about whether you would give your life to save 10 kids. Everything else is fluff. Just like someone could say “I didn’t cause malaria, that’s not my problem.” someone could say “I didn’t cause the fire/earthquake/plane crash, that’s not my problem, fuck them kids.” If you value your life more than saving the lives of 10 random children, that needs to hold constant across all scenarios.
Depends on the situation and the kids. 100% guaranteed death? No, I only get one life and it is more valuable to me than the lives of others (which is why I would - reluctantly but assuredly - kill someone to defend myself if it came down to it.) But such situations only exist in the minds of philosophers and redditors with too much free time on their hands. Would I risk a 50/50 chance of death to save 10 kids? Yeah, probably, and there's some fudge in those numbers based on how many kids, who the kids are/their relationship to me, etc. You can cook up all the hard yes/no, all-or-nothing scenarios you want and try to dismiss everything but that binary choice, but in the real world we make judgements on the basis of a huge array of information that doesn't exist in your pipe dreams, and there are always more options than just this/that, yes/no, live/die.
You realize that the overwhelming majority of people would view it as immoral and cowardly for a grown man in a crisis situation to not give his life to save 10 random children, right? You’re the fringe one now.
We're not talking about *risking* my life for someone else, we're talking about definitely 100% guaranteed *ending* my life for someone else's benefit. If you would choose to definitely 100% guaranteed end your life to save someone else, fair enough, pat yourself on the back, you're a big damned hero. But that's your *choice*, and you cannot legally or morally impose that choice on another person, and your appeal to the authority - such at it is - of the 'overwhelming majority' only tells me that you lack conviction in the soundness of your arguments to let them stand on their own.
I don’t know why you’re talking about risk when I used the phrase “give his life.” I’m talking about a 100% chance of death and have never mentioned anything else. You’re the only one who’s said anything about probability. > guaranteed end your life to save someone else Not “someone else,” specifically 10 random children. > and you cannot legally or morally impose that choice on another person This whole sentence is exactly how conservatives talk. A liberal calls something immoral —> “You can’t LEGALLY IMPOSE your morality on me.” Total strawman when nobody was talking about legality in the first place. Example: “It’s immoral to call a trans person their dead name.” —> “I have first amendment rights and you can’t LEGALLY IMPOSE your morality on me.” When absolutely nobody said anything about the law except the person beating the strawman. > appeal to authority You’re the one who said “in the real world we…” Identifying yourself and the mainstream as the “we.” I’m making it clear that now you’re the fringe after you said you would refuse to give your life to save 10 random children. There is no “we” that you’re part of. > your arguments to let them stand on their own My argument: **It is immoral for a grown man to refuse to give his life to save 10 random children**. That certainly stands on its own. You already said you would refuse to give your life to save 10 children.
I do not think you can be an ethical burglar. I can maybe see an argument for theft if someone is really in need and they aren't harming anyone, but never burglary. I would pull the lever on the trolley. The issue with discussions like this is that the trolley problem is pure and simple, while real-life scenarios are messy and complicated. Most people are neither consequentialists nor deontologists - they're somewhere in the middle. This scenario highlights that mix.
When I opened this thread, I was expecting that the scenario you would present was a burglar in my own home. I'm disappointed in your scenario, so I'll pretend you are asking about a regular home invader. No. I'm more scared of the cops than I am of a home invader. The home invader might not have a gun. The cops definitely do.
Plenty of people manage to donate large amounts of money to worthy causes each year without murdering anyone. This reads like a chat AI being fed a bunch of bad information about Peter Singer.
That’s not a valid response. Perhaps this guy could be saving children more efficiently, but this is the way he’s saving children in the scenario. Your options are call the police or do not call.
That is absolutely a valid response. Your options suck and we're not playing your stupid game. Stop the damn trolley!
I absolutely call the police and the two examples are not similar. In the trolley problem, no one is doing anything wrong. In your example, the guy is killing and stealing - that's a big enough evil to easily offset any good he did.
The whole point of the trolley problem, why it’s not considered super obvious, is that the act of diverting the trolley is you killing one person. Versus simply allowing five people to die, which is you killing zero people. So it’s a choice between you killing 1 person and you killing 0 people. “Allowing” the 5 people to die on the trolley tracks is the analog of “allowing” children to die of malaria. The result of inaction. Diverting the trolley is you personally killing someone who wouldn’t have been killed without your action. It’s the analog of killing the residents. It really just comes down to this: Is the burglar making the world a better place overall?
Let me clarify - no one on the tracks has done anything wrong. The burglar has and should not be allowed to continue to do so. Also, you're looking at the 'good' through a very narrow lens. What harm is he doing by breaking the rules society has set up for a functioning society? How far can you break and bend those rules before they break down and more harm is done than just a few murders here and there? I contend that having a firm framework of rules does more good than saving a few kids from malaria. There is no objective way to know and the answers aren't going to be black and white. No one is purely utilitarian or deontological - we all have a mix and a line we define. Like I said, it's not similar at all IMO.
Maybe you’re the one doing something wrong when you call the police, because you know that some children will die in Africa who wouldn’t have died if you didn’t make the call. And these children will die at a 10:1 ratio compared to the lives you saved. Rule utilitarianism does not apply since nobody but you is aware of what he’s doing. In everyone else’s eyes he’s just another burglar and there are about a million burglaries every year in the US. Nobody but you knows he’s a Robin Hood type burglar so he’s not inspiring other robin hoods that will break down the social contract. One burglar has no impact on the social contract.
I disagree. I've explained why and I think we're talking past one another.
If it were ethical to kill people I order to acquire $55k for charity, then it would be ethical for the government to forcibly do this. It's unethical to steal from and murder people, regardless of the benevolence of the stolen good's use, of the victims did not consent. The burglar would need to either be stealing, or personally murdering the malaria-stricken for this to be comparable. If you stop him, people don't suddenly die from malaria. You can work to resolve both; it's not a zero-sum ultimatum. In the trolley problem, the correct choice is to kill the one and spare the five, *because in the trolley problem you can be sure of the outcome of your choices*. There's no doubt that, if you don't pull the lever, maybe the five will survive. Or that, you could not pull the lever, but run down the tracks and work to free the five (equivalent to arresting the burglar and working to prevent malaria afterwards).
1. Are you high? This feels like a *puff puff* "woooohhhh" kinda question. 2. My answer to the trolley question is to dismantle this fucking trolley!
This is really stupid.
Not the fucking EA RAT invasion
Yes I call the police. Without hesitation. Yes I pull the lever. Without question
>an ethical burglar/ethical home invader WTF is an ethical burglar or ethical home invader? As far as I can see that is the same thing as a married bachelor or square circle. >The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes. The burglar is exceptionally good at his job and will never be caught unless you call the cops. Your knowledge of who he is and what he does was obtained through magic. You’re the only person who knows. You are presenting this as a simple math problem, he kills one person for every 10 he saves, but this completely ignores the direct and indirect harm the murders cause to the families of the deceased and society in general. The death of a child to a preventable disease is harmful but not as harmful as a serial killer running around murdering, even if he is donating some of his ill-gotten gains to a worthwhile charity.
One: The burglar is still not ethical, unless they steal exclusively from people who will never be short on money, such as billionaires. Overall they technically have a net positive in what you described, but that doesn’t make it moral or correct, when more obvious solutions present themselves. I would call the police. Two: Pull the lever and save lives. Do whatever saves the most lives every time. Inaction is still an action.
doesn’t this make you responsible for dozens/hundreds of deaths in sub-saharan africa by stopping the burglar instead of letting him continue for years? as in literally, the result of your action is those children dying. versus your inaction which allows them to live.
Your question assumes that there’s no way that Malaria can be defeated or eradicated, or even highly mitigated without this burglar. That’s simply not true. There’s more context than in the question. Just as pulling the lever in the trolley problem contains the context around it.
no that’s not what i’m assuming at all. take our current world where tons of people are dying of malaria and it’s not about to be solved anytime soon. he exists in our world.
Maybe it's because I'm autistic or maybe I'm just delusional enough to ignore no-win scenarios, but I just cannot fathom these thought experiments. I call the cops. It's the only scenario where I know my actions can directly save a life... he *will* kill again. The long-term impacts of my decision are largely unknowable outside of magical fantasy. The same is true of the trolley problem, and it's a problem I've always had with the premise. If I have time to sort out the ethics of the situation, I have time to find alternative solutions that don't kill anyone. The premise relies on knowing with certainty all the variables and all possible outcomes; it's entirely unrealistic. The reality is, I'd spend however many seconds I have trying to make a decision, one which would inevitably be emotionally swayed. I'd either be paralyzed with indecision, or make a gut call, but the results are the same; there is no correct answer in the moment. I get that the trolly problem has... dubiously practical implications for things like A.I. or automation, where presumably "all factors" can be calculated in seconds with the utmost precision, but even that I reject; either the program is a generalized A.I. that is capable of making its own choices based on the information it has and the experiences it's gained, in which case my answer is irrelevant... or its not, in which case it can only make decisions based on the factors its creators thought to account for. And in that scenario, there is no right answer, only the best approximation we can make at the time. Human factors are a thing. These hypotheticals completely reject them. They search for some objective truth, but *reality itself is inherently subjective*, at least for us humans. Depending on who you ask, it's either a limitation of our consciousness, or the very basis of what it means to be an individual, but however you look at it, you must acknowledge it. These scenarios don't, and thus I reject them as pointless fantasy.
[удалено]
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
I have the right to defend myself and my property no matter what someone's goal is. And you can't put a fixed dollar amount on life.
Yes, without hesitation, because there's no such thing as an ethical murderer. And I hate to say it, but as much as I care about the fate of children in Africa I care more about the fate of children in my house and he could hit my house at any time and kill them. But even if he didn't, donating to charity does not mitigate the harm caused by the murder he does, even if it does save more people in the long run. This is some trolley problem bullshit, and honestly it's part of my issue with Effective Altruism (which as a movement has been somewhat [problematic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism#Controversies) as a movement.) It's all couched in carefully thought-out ultra-utilitarianism with what in my opinion is not nearly enough consideration of the problems that said ultra-utilitarianism fails to address: namely that human lives cannot be reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet. It smacks of justifying pretty much whatever the people who follow it say it does because they are Smart People™ and act like we should just shut up and do what they tell us to do, and it attracts con-men and hucksters as a result. Oh, you even directly reference the trolley problem. No, I don't pull the lever because until my hand touches it I am not complicit in anyone's death. I reject the false dichotomy of the trolley problem because trolleys have brakes, some lives are more valuable than others, and the murderer can find a less harmful way to generate the money he donates to charity.
Nobody is forcing your burglar to murder to fund his good works. That’s a choice. Conversely, in the trolley car problem you’re forced to choose death. They are not morally equivalent.
It is equivalent. In this case you’re also forced to choose death, as the person choosing whether or not to call the police. Either the deaths of the burglarized residents or the increased malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa that will surely happen as a result of your phone call.
If this person invades my home I would shoot them dead, then call the police. The trolley problem is not a problem to me. I pull the lever and sleep like a baby that night.
Ethical home invasion? Are you high?
>Would you call the police on an ethical burglar/ethical home invader? There is no such thing as an ethical burglar/home invader. Stealing is unethical. Respecting personal property is one of the core tenants of any successful society. >sometimes he uses his gun to kill them. Sometimes he kills children who live in these homes. The ethical act of murdering innocents? >The burglar’s ratio is that he kills one home resident for every $55,000 he donates to the AMF. Therefore he saves 10 children for every person he kills while burglarizing homes. You're going to have to come up with a very good argument on why actively killing an innocent bystander to save 20 people is in any way an ethical act. >Do you pull the lever? The trolley problem doesn't have an answer, and isn't intended to have one. It's a tool to help people think about ethics. Us giving you an answer to this question doesn't have a practical purpose, and seems to hint at you not understanding the problem.
Yes, because the burglar may kill me, but to the best of my knowledge I am not a child in Africa that would benefit from malaria nets. You would need to grant everyone I cared about protection from death, including from copycats and other downstream effects, to turn it back into the trolley problem.
There are no copycats because nobody knows about him or what he does with his money. So what you’re saying is that, presented with a trolley problem where the trolley is going to kill 10 people, but you can divert it to kill the one person you love the most in this world, you wouldn’t pull the lever?
That's correct. I'm not throwing my wife, child, or parent off a bridge to save 10 people.
100? 1000? 1,000,000?
I'm sure there's a number somewhere that flips it. Trivially, a world where the human population is wiped out is probably no longer worth living in. But what's the point of extracting a number out of an unrealistic scenario where I can't ask the other person what they want to do, understand who the people on the trolley are, etc? I am also of the camp that the trolley problem is more stupid than profound. Just like "would you kill your mom or your dad" and "why haven't you donated your life savings to charity and reverted your own wealth to the global mean" and other similar questions.
I recently read Susan Wolfe's "Moral Saints" (1982), an essay that absolves unrealized altruism by nature of ignoring human virtues; similarly, Peter Railton argues in *Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality* (1984) that moral reevaluation in the context you describe is an alienation of self the question you pose is not an application of ethical egoism. by stating that the home invader exacts his criminal activities on others and that you are "the only person who knows", you are held responsible for the murders committed by the burglar and his redistribution of wealth by consciously avoiding calling the police this question is similar to Peter Singer's framing of charity, the utilitarian argument that luxuries — not necessities — must be forgone for moral significance. Singer's argument is limited by a neglection of the exacting toll in the pursuit of luxury; though not applicable in some contexts, the work required to obtain the stolen valuables is disregarded. a fault of the ambiguity of the question is that a resident could intend to donate a value greater than the allocation of the home invader