One car, one person, one lever, plus six hapless…
Hearing this, the DNA of some netizens should have moved a little.
Yes, this is the famous “trolley problem.”
It is no exaggeration to say that almost everyone has seen this famous ethical thought experiment in various places. It has been proposed since decades ago, and has tortured the hearts of countless people.
Everyone should have stood in front of this problem for a while, and then silently made their own judgments in their hearts.
But it’s worth noting that some people don’t get out of the “trolley problem.” They have been polishing, revising, and parodying this famous experiment, and have come up with endless versions…
No one knows what these “trolley junkies” really want, maybe they just want to see the trolley kill more people.
The trolley problem originated in a 1967 paper by British philosopher Philippa Foot. It has been iterated, modified, and refined many times, until it has become the version we see today:
A runaway train travels on the tracks. On the track where the train was traveling, five people were tied up and unable to move. The train is about to run over them.
You can change the direction of the train by pulling a lever to move it onto another track. But the problem is that there is also a person tied to the other track. And what will you do?
Strictly speaking, this is not really a “question”, but more of a “moral dilemma” because it doesn’t have a real right answer – no one can say Figure out what to do is really right.
That’s why this issue has been widely discussed. In addition to philosophy and ethics, subjects such as psychology and cognitive science also involve this “trolley problem”.
It became well known, one of the most famous questions of the mind, applied to the study of moral psychology, the subject of books…even on the web, it’s forever It’s a topic that can be debated countless times.
But things are starting to look a little different.
In 2009, philosophy professor Jesse Prinz uploaded a related drawing of her own creation.
This picture may have been seen countless times, and it has almost become a representative picture of the trolley problem.
Subsequently in 2013, a netizen on the forum 4chan added a little “secondary creation” to the picture: he turned a few unlucky punks on the track into some famous ones philosopher.
This is how the legend begins.
Perhaps because there are more vivid pictures, people’s thinking is more easily stimulated. Netizens have gradually become keen to use the method of modifying pictures to add some material to the problem of the tram.
At first people just added a little extra to the apparently simple trolley problem to make the whole situation more complicated.
For example, they started to “weight” the sides of the track.
Although people today mostly agree that “life cannot and cannot be compared”, what they really want to ask is “If this were the case, you would be more inclined to How?”
As a result, the additional conditions that netizens began to add became more and more varied.
If you do nothing and hit one person, there is a 1 in 4 chance that the trolley will hit five people.
Of course there are some more human tests.
But as you might expect, humans don’t let themselves go so easily.
Actually, there may be a more appropriate solution to the trolley problem for ordinary people, because legally speaking, if you pull a lever and save five people, you will save one person death, which may result in legal disputes.
But people don’t want a “comparative solution”.
In this fundamentally dilemma, people want to test and observe their own moral standards.
Some people don’t really care about the practical significance of the trolley problem, and just want to torture themselves or others with similar extreme scenarios.
This also has some slightly bizarre versions later.
Bu La: One will die, but you don’t know; La: No one will die, but you think you killed someone.
What is measured by people on two tracks is no longer a life with different labels, but a more complex choice.
Among these new trolley puzzles, you may have an easier choice, but you’ll also have a lot of headaches because of the awkwardness involved.
Sometimes it gets you thinking more…
If someone had to sacrifice their family for race…
It is worth mentioning that the trolley problem of science fiction ethics has become a hot topic of discussion among fans.
Some may be hundreds of years from nowA topic that can only be formally discussed has now been put on the table with the help of the trolley problem.
A supercomputer that can completely solve the trolley problem vs 2000 living people
Example of Cloning Ethics:
Issues involving time travel:
In fact, one fact can be seen from the style of these trolley puzzles: some people may have been fixed by the devil.
If a person is too obsessed with unanswered questions, there are only two choices before him: philosophers, or demons.
I don’t know if anyone has become the former because of the trolley problem, but there are quite a few who have gone the latter way.
Because people who are still addicted to the trolley problem, the upgraded version has become like this:
Nowadays, people are talking about this beyond the original trolley problem:
Though things are still happening on that track, the taste is different a long time ago:
The focus of the questions also began to shift away from ethics:
But…you don’t understand what he wants either:
The villain holding the lever is no longer as simple as it used to be.
So some people seem to no longer want to discuss it seriously.
As the discussion about the trolley problem heats up, a trend is starting to become apparent.
You guys might just want to watch a trolley hit someone——
Or something else…
As the discussion intensified, people became more and more fascinated by the trolley problem.
The production of related peripherals is already elementary. There are already games themed around the trolley puzzle. Or there are already programs that have begun to let passers-by experience the choice of “pulling and not pulling” (of course, it is only a simulation):
Some parents are also very happy to torture their children about what to do in this situation.
It’s all to die for!
Some people who are stuck in the “trolley quagmire.” I have imagined countless times that I hold the lever that determines my destiny.
They don’t want to put down the butcher’s knife. Just want to let the cold trolley run over all moral codes.
Standing at the intersection of those two tracks is a dream that some people cannot put down.
At current trends, people mayCan never let go of the fascination with the trolley puzzle.
This is not difficult to understand, because moral torture can always stimulate the human desire to think. One of the best ways to explore ourselves is by questioning ourselves “what would you do?” over and over with different scenarios.
But in fact, with the development of artificial intelligence, maybe we will have to face the “trolley problem” one day:
In 2016, MIT launched an online experiment platform called the Moral Machine, which aims to explore the ethical dilemmas facing autonomous vehicles.
On this platform, people need to decide which people should be “sacrifice” in a critical moment in a self-driving car.
Of course, this is currently an experiment. But with the development of artificial intelligence, autonomous machines (such as smart electric vehicles) will inevitably face such trade-offs.
This is a question that may not be on the table for many years. At this moment, we may have only one hope for this dilemma-
And I just happened to pass by with a toilet stick.
