32 thoughts on “I Have No Trouble Believing This”

  1. It would mostly encompass the Libertarian utilitarian branch, on the Milton Friedman kind of people, who are free marketeers not because it is moral but because it is the best system. I think that even Mises said that He will be a socialist if proof was given to him that it worked.

    I don’t see a really utilitarian driven thinking on the left, they seem to be mostly utopia driven.

    However this might be interesting if we count ”moderate pragmatist” as utilitarian … David Brooks is the Joker long lost twin indeed.

  2. Perhaps this explains why university psychology, morality, and philosophy departments seem to be filled with wacked out psychos. They thought they were selecting for those who have a higher view of morality, and they were really testing to see who agreed with Machiavellian sociopaths. No wonder interdepartmental politics leaves so many knives in people’s backs.

  4. Politically biased psychology professors?!!! No way!

    Well, at least one psychologist publically lamented that psychology professors have about as much diversity of thought and background as Rome’s College of Cardinals.

  5. I have to wonder about researchers who identify problem-solving traits by assuming the way to stop a runaway train is with a human body. Suppose I did decide to throw Tubby in front of the train; assuming his greater weight didn’t enable him to throw me instead, what if the train just rolls over him and continues on to kill the other five I was supposedly trying to save?

    I’d look like an idiot, and Ann Coulter would never forgive me for getting her presidential dream candidate killed for nothing.

  7. What McGehee said. I read the linked article, and thought, “How would even a very large person stop a runaway train? It would just cut him in half and keep going.”

  8. Come on people….It is a simple thought experiment. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. And is it morally right for you to make the choice. I’m in the yell and scream at the ignorant five then stand back and watch camp.

  9. Umm, why would an antisocial person care? The trolley line is going to be shut down because of the accident ANYWAYS, whether one person or five (six, as Rickl pointed out) were killed, and if he or she did throw Cris…I mean Tubby onto the line, that would result in a very inconvenient arrest for murder.

    The utilitarian response IMO would be to depart the area
    immediately. Not only do you not want blood sprayed on your clothes, you also don’t want to be held up as a witness.

  10. The article might–might–make more sense if they used a bus instead of a train in their scenario.

  11. Rickl,
    I was trying find a similar situation and even a bus seems like stretch. Maybe a runaway Ford Pinto, or Yugo.

    LeCar!!!

    It’s a silly premise.

  12. People arguing whether or not the fat person will stop the train annoy me endlessly. YOU HAVE BEEN PROVIDED THAT INFORMATION – it will. Now CHOOSE. If you want to rationalize away your indecision, become a politician. The general question is: should you sacrifice one life to save five? The answer is obviously no.. you don’t murder people, regardless of how wonderful you KNOW the outcome will be. That anyone would say yes demonstrates how trivially easy it is to convince people to kill for the “greater good”.

    1. What if I don’t trust the source of the information?

      Thought experiments tell us a great deal about those who propose them, and those willing to play along with them, and rarely anything at all about the real world beyond those two subgroups.

    2. Trent’s insistance that “we already know” is hilarious. The scenario makes no sense. How would you know that a trolley, which would surely kill a person standing in front of it, would stop because of the given size of the person killed? Further, in what way would it stop the trolley that would save the 5 people on board when inaction would have killed them. In order to answer the question, you must first accept the morality of ther person making the claim.

      In Trent’s world, he simply answers murdering is wrong period. Then you don’t have to worry about the other person’s morality. So Al-Awlaki goes on his merry way.

    3. Trent speaks with clarity. However, muddying waters is what thinkers do.

      It does not say the trolley will be stopped by the fat man, only that the other five will avoid death because of the one mans death.

      By keeping things simple, Trent comes to the correct conclusion. Something a sociopath might not.

  13. Sometimes no moral choice exists. Do you:

    A. Nuke the enemy city, killing thousands of innocent women and children by weapon effects in an instant; or

    B. Invade the enemy nation, killing thousands of innocent women and children by bullet, bayonet, disease, and starvation over a period of moths or years?

    Neither choice could be considered moral. It is immoral to kill civilians in war, and all the rationalization in the world won’t change that fact. Result: sometimes we must do evil acts to achieve good ends.

    HOWEVER

    We must never try and rationalize away the evil we have done in such cases. We must instead admit to having done evil for good ends, submit ourselves to the judgment of authority, and accept the consequences without complaint. Only by such an act of self-sacrifice will the scales of justice balance in such an unhappy circumstance.

    1. Under what possible circumstances are they the only options? It really does say like you’re saying that making moral choices is pointless.

      [blockquote]sometimes we must do evil acts to achieve good ends[/blockquote]

      There’s no such thing as “good ends”. [b]Consequences don’t matter[/b]. Choices are moral or not regardless of the outcome.

      When is an act moral? The answer has nothing to do with what you think, feel, or know what might result from the act. The morality of an act is determined before the act. A given person may not have all the information necessary to make the correct moral decision, which is unfortunate, but it is never the case that a choice cannot be deemed moral or not until the consequences of that act have been evaluated.

      Utilitarianism is a morally bankrupt philosophy.

  14. You forgot an option:

    C. Call a truce. The political faction that instigated the war remains in power, thus the enemy remains a perpetual threat. I used to call this the Saddam Option, after the resolution of Iraq War I.

    What is unique about this option is that the casualty count can’t be estimated. There is no Hari Seldon or time-traveling British-accented bohemian who can give us an idea of the consequences.

    1. But Trent said earlier: “YOU HAVE BEEN PROVIDED THAT INFORMATION – it will. Now CHOOSE.” So you are not allowed a third choice, no matter how rational it might be to other people.

      1. People are asked questions all the time where there are false choices. How do we handle those questions? I tend to muddy the waters while looking for the simplest answer. But it’s a choice. In artificial settings it is assumed you will accept the given. In real life, you never should because we are constantly missing things.

        It’s the difference between rules and principles. Principles are the simple guides we should use to develop rules. Rules that violate principles are meant to be broken.

        You do not kill the innocent (innocents that you assume of all unless evidence says otherwise.)

        You do not kill the guilty except to prevent murder. However, they do not obligate you to care for them by their killing either. This is why expulsion from society is a better alternative than prison.

        Rules have their limits which is why we have judges.

  16. I’d have to say that tubby is worth more than five idiots on a train track. His life is spared… for now.

  17. For an absolutely perfect example of antisocial personality traits tending to utilitarianism, read up on Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution. Doesn’t get any more crystal-clear than that.

  18. The frame implies the correlation. If they had asked, “You can use fetal stem cells to conduct research to save five lives, would you?” the headline would be “non-utilitarian beliefs correlated with religious fundamentalist beliefs”.

  20. I really am hesitant about posting on this topic. I am what is called a polymath. I began my life by getting a degree in physics. After a few years of outside of academia life and a few years of grad school, I tried a career change. My next stint of grad school was in social psychology at Columbia University. I wound up in IT partly because I can be good at tech work and I needed a job and could get one in IT. Along the way I became a pretty good visual artist as well. There aren’t many people like me.

    Reference has been made about how psychologists — especially ones in academia — can be narrow. Unfortunately the same can be said about many kinds of specialists — including those in engineering and/or business. What’s worse about the latter kind today is that some of them can have far more power in our society than those academic psychologists. An academic psychologist can publish some papers which are read by people who are similar in their interests and background. An engineer in a position of power — consider President Jimmy Carter for example — can have impacts far beyond their immediate circle.

    I will finish by pointing people an older blog on my website I titled An Interesting Side Comment by Michael Griffin. I was trying to teach a group of engineers a few interesting points about people. Said group of engineers — mostly AIAA members — attacked me for writing what I did. Some of them said the piece was more about me than Griffin. It wasn’t. I used myself as an example to try and teach people about outliers and contrast such people as different from fanatics.

    I’ve probably written too much for this posting — and that doesn’t count the rather long blog posting of mine that I point at.

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