EDIT Ok so it's just the trolly problem.

EDIT2 : AHA War Games 1983. "The only winning move is not to play." (We might call this the final product of a lot of smart philosophical digestion, because it's a famous movie). There's always the perfectly valid option to ditch the riddle. (Because maybe the riddle is dumb, or maybe the riddle is no better than a thousand others, utilitywise )

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[โ€“] 47 points 1 year ago (26 children)

Trolley problem is a bullshit in the first place, just as your "what if" nonsense. Millions of innocent children are dying and being tortured already by the capitalism, which is also main cause of global warming.

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  • [โ€“] [S] -3 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Ok, why is the trolley problem bullshit? Seriously.

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  • [โ€“] 11 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    You can construct a trolley problem to justify anything you want. It's about the constraints that the person who posed the question chose. You don't really get to choose in a trolley problem. The constraints choose for you. In the real world, our options are not so constrained and the outcomes are not so clear. As such it is useless for actually figuring out what to do.

    The trolley problem is a useful basic philosophical experiment to get people to think about things and reflect on constraints, assumptions, and values. And often the best response is in fact "fuck these constraints and assumptions!"

    So the trolley problem is not bullshit, but it is very very often misapplied in a bullshit or bad faith way, for example last year in the US I saw a lot of liberals uncritically and unironically appeal to "the trolley problem" to rationalize voting for the party that was committing a live-streamed Holocaust. They were using it to absolve themselves of the responsibility to think about and own their moral judgements, and that is the sort of misuse that a lot of people balk at.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [โ€“] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Because it implies utilitarianism is the best option by oversimplifying the problem. For example in your example you gave zero details on the situation.

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  • [โ€“] [S] -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

    It's what we call an abstraction. This particular abstraction highlights a moral point.

    Not bullshit. Useful and interesting.

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  • [โ€“] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Typically, an abstraction maintains the essence of the original. Asking "what if , but it costs " isn't an abstraction.

    I'm not aware of a proposed solution to climate change that involves mass torture or murder.

    The question feels more like one of those terrible parlor games where you have to pick a few cards and then argue some randomly generated point.

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Okay let me try another abstraction. Should we cure cancer but kill a bunch of people?

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  • [โ€“] [S] -4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    That's the same riddle. You get that, right?

    And so we find ourselves without an easy answer. And so we are forced to inspect the riddle more closely. To uncover hidden assumptions and such. We might even do that in conversation, on a forum like lemmy.

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The core of the riddle is that it is an ultimatum.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum

    Ultimatums have been debated historically, in great detail. For example, in the old testament of the bible.

    https://www.bibleoutlines.com/isaiah-361-377-dont-make-a-deal-with-the-devil/

    Even if one is not religious or cares not for reading biblical stuff, it is simplified effectively as such:

    If given only 2 choices, it is never fair. Find another choice.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think that's a different thing.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 1 year ago

    You are right, it's not the same thing. I had an English teacher who tossed out her vocabulary lesson one day and instead went off on a very energetic rant about critical thinking, ultimatums, game theory, dilemma, paradox and so on. I've always wanted to recreate her lesson but never get it right.

    I do think my final line still applies for this scenario. There's always another way. I think War Games does the same idea I was trying to convey but I've never seen it, I've only seen enough references to it, to vagely know what it's about..

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  • [+] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)
  • [โ€“] 1 point 1 year ago* (5 children)
    1. Per capita it's not, by far it's not.
    2. Ever wondered why it has such emissions? Because it produce literally half of everything produced in the world, for usage of both you and me and everyone else. Sourcing of emissions by consumption make it way worse for west. Why? Capitalism, imperialist countries consume far more.
    3. Historical emissions. Wow. Even worse picture for the west. They don't get to deindustrialise then whine about China's emissions. Why? Capitalism again.
    4. Outsourcing production to cheaper countries isn't ecologically friendly move. Capitalism again.
    5. China is the only country which consistently rolls out ecological initiatives on a systemic level, US dismantle even their own poor as shit regularions and euros set up the emission market and are trading it, pretending it's meaningful. Capitalism again.
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  • [+] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
  • [โ€“] 1 point 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Wow you managed to make a complete illiterate and bad faith dumbass of yourself in just two sentences. You should repost that to some reddit main, maybe you would get some reward.

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