Whenever the trolley dilemma is brought up, I always thought about the video of a father demonstrating the dilemma to his 2-yo son with a toy train set, which his son responded with putting all "people" onto the same track then running them over with the toy train lol Sounds like a fun topic to explain the psychology behind.

My problem with the trolley situation is, by pulling the lever or pushing the large person you have now have a personal hand in killing a person. You might be able to justify the thought that you just watched 5 people die and convince yourself you couldn't help them, but can you deal with the thought that you just murdered someone. Now, until you actually are in this situation you will never know how morality comes into play. If it's a much older person you might look at the whole situation differently than if it is a young person. Or visa versa. You don't know until that split second in time actually happens.

Break the Trolly, it's the Kobayashi Maru of moral arguments used to reinforce binary solutions to non binary situations.

I think the option of shoving one man on to the tracks also involves doubt that the trolley would even stop as a result of the decision, causing hesitation to choose that as a better action.

Intent is a major part of reasoning and morality too. There are vastly different punishments in different judicial systems for murder and manslaughter. Even types of murder and manslaughter are punished differently. In all these situations someone dies the only thing that changes is intent, but an individual is punished very differently under the law. This seems to show that there is a pretty large consensus that outcome is less important than behavior.

Regarding The Trolley Problem, I once heard a version of this dilemma, where 6 people on both sides of the tracks are not tied down to the tracks, but instead it's told, that the first 5 people are playing on the tracks, while they may or may not be aware that this is a dangerous activity, while the man on the other side of the tracks is crossing them, knowing that the trolley won't cross there any time soon. In my eyes this modification of the dilemma completely changes how people might react to it, myself included.

9:37 the way you worded the trolley problem, "a single person standing" makes throwing the switch more moral because it has a chance of resulting in zero loss, if the person standing is smart enough and fast enough to jump off the track. they arent restrained.

I don't even watch this man for school. I watch this guy because he makes learning this stuff fun. No idea why, man just does better than everyone else

Regarding the trolley problem. Pulling the lever is an act of murder. Just the same as pushing the man from the bridge to derail the trolley. If either one of these scenarios actually took place the police would be obligated to lay criminal charges.

On a side note about the Trolley problem. One perspective I read about was by interacting with the lever to switch the tracks, you are now responsible for the deaths of the single individual, when previously, no one would have been responsible. Great video professor.

Interesting. I knew of the trolley dilemma, but I never heard the version of me pushing a man on the track. It’s funny how being closer and having a personal contact completely changes our perception, even if the result is exactly the same : one person dies because of my action. It’s way easier to pull a lever than pushing somebody under the trolley.

Pretty Damn good! My father studied under Gregory Bateson and was working on a masters degree in ‘Clinical Philosophy’ at UCSC. Whenever I asked my father a question about it, he gave me books to read instead of answering the question (probably because I was a teen only into reading science fiction). But this video gives me some idea as to what my father was trying to do in using philosophy to help people who have difficulty dealing with the world around them.

Thank you, Professor Dave!

Pull the switch after the front wheels start to go one way and then the rear wheels will go the other way, trolleys don't move fast so it will likely tip over slowly only resulting in a few injuries and no deaths

I think mainly that the psychology of these kinds of moral problems like the trolley problem also stems from personal affliction. You're less likely to push a man off a bridge to save 5 people because you are physically closer, therefore more connected with that man, even if you never spoken to them before. Another issue is when the victims of the trolley problem have a desire for either self-harm or suicide, you're much more likely to sacrifice the person with suicidal intentions first to save others, but that's a moral problem in and of itself. Overall, a very interesting video Dave! I wanted to major in psychology, but videos like yours satisfy my curiosity.

I love your channel. You do such a great job to simplify so much from a position of trustworthy standards. Gambatte to your journey to improve you and us following you.

Big fan of your biology videos. Philosophy is my passion. Really cool to hear you talking about it. In your first moral dilemma, a good method would be that of Kants by asking is it one in which could be universalized?

The problem with the bridge alteration of the trolley problem is that it requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, so it's easy for people to wiggle out of answering. You know pulling the lever will kill the one person for a certainty, but you don't know for a certainty that pushing the man will stop the trolley. There's a good chance you'll end up killing 6 people. Obviously pushing the man stops the train 100% of the time in this scenario for the sake of the exercise, but it's not ideal.

Merry belated Christmas, Dave! 🎄

Having a substantial lack of empathy, on a brink of AS, I have always responded to the trolley dilemma as 'let the 5 people die'. The justification I took is that 'not preventing death' and 'killing' are by definition two different acts - one morally situational, another absolutely immoral. Disqualifying one option this way, I am left only with the other one, no matter how inconvenient it might appear.

Excited for that Philosophy Series.😮

I believe that by intervening in the event makes you accountable. So, even if it's 5 v 1, it's not my business to intervene if it makes me accountable for the one death anyway. My priority is my own well-being. If I can produce an optimal solution by saving everyone, then I would. If I cannot produce such a solution, then I would be saving the 5 people, if killing the other person isn't going to bite me in the butt in the future. If I don't pull, it was never in my hands.

Thank you for today's lesson, more psychology pls!

Hey Dave, what are your thoughts on preconventional morality in relation to religion? It seems like religious organizations put a huge emphasis on teaching people what is right and wrong based on direct consequences (promise of heaven or threat of hell) in a very black and white way, much like Kohlberg described with children and their parents. Would children in highly religious families never get a chance to evolve beyond a conventional sense of morality or truly internalize universal values?

This is the first non-debunking video of yours that KZfaq has suggested me!

So the trolley example is off because the one person is standing while the others are tied. So technically the one with a single person can still avoid the trolley by getting off the tracks.

Switch the switch in a way to derail the trolly!

Kent is shaking in his boots rn

as a philosophy student I am absolutely waiting for the philosophy series

Two days after Christmas, you made my head explode. Too much thinking!

The first example sounds a lot like American healthcare...

man this guy knows a lot about the science stuff

I don't know why it didn't click in my head until 3:34 that I learned this in school. I don't think I've heard that initial story before.

📍I have created a more stronger moral dillema way harder and complicated then the trolly problem, You have two options to choose from: 1. You die peacefully, and rest of human beings suffers forever 2. You suffer forever, and all human beings dies peacefully What would you choose? Note: if you don't choose, human beings will choose you to suffer forever instead of them. What are your thoughts dave, and would love to see you mention this new example in a new video, i asked religious people, and many of them choosed to die peacefully, and let humanity suffers including their holy prophets

The case for morality and empathy becomes even more tangled when we consider the prospects for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. For example, while Tesla is still struggling for true full self-driving capability, how does a machine go about making moral judgements when faced with "no-win" situations? That is, if an AI-controlled vehicle finds itself in a situation where no matter what it does, it calculates that someone is inevitably going to be seriously injured or killed, how does it decide what action to take? Deeper still, if an AI makes what society collectively believes is the "wrong" decision, who is to blame? Is the AI programmer to blame? Or, is there no blame at all since, by design, the AI has developed beyond its original programming? The novel by Isaac Asimov, I, Robot, which was later turned into a movie (2004) starring Will Smith, was an exploration of this very dilemma. Nice work, Professor Dave. This series on philosophy is certainly making us all seriously think about morality in a productive way.

my aswer to trolley dillema was always, I would be too bloody terrified to even think to pull any leavers

11:34 the problem is that the person answering doesnt have a choice in the first problem, while in the second, you do have a choice of involving yet another individual in such a dangerous situation, therefore triggering the gut reaction first is a situation where we cant put in or out something or someone into the equation unlike in the second

I honestly love you dave

Hard to make decisions based on morality cause I don't know what actually is moral or even right for everyone

I wish there was a dilemma with the Trolley Bridge where the Big Guy has a weapon and makes the two, who were trying to push him, instead they get tossed down to the tracks to save the five people.

It's worth noting that many of the complaints about Kohlberg can be fixed by making some minor changes to his model. He, like Piaget before him, assumed that levelling up to the next stage meant that the individual would no longer use the "lower" form of moral reasoning. If, however, we accept that individuals absolutely can revert to lower forms of reasoning (being hangry is a thing), we can do away with many concerns about the theory. Then we only have to go one step further and do away with the value judgment of "lower forms of reasoning." Instead, we see that the three levels and their stages are reliant on exposure to relevant instances, the cognitive ability to engage with solutions, and the ability to integrate the relevant thinking styles. We can say that post-conventional reasoning is more complex than conventional reasoning, which, in turn, is more complex than pre-conventional reasoning (the names that Kohlberg gave them signpost that pretty hard). It is also the case, however, that some instances of moral decision-making are not complex and don't require complex thinking to resolve; it is quite reasonable to apply the level of moral problem-solving required to solve the moral problem, what the higher forms of moral reasoning do provide is a means to assess one's behaviour after the fact and to learn from that reasoning to do better next time (if necessary). Similarly, the removal of the value judgment about the relative complexity of moral reasoning also allows one to include empathy/mercy as a valid motivation for reasoning that is no less valuable than a justice-based approach, it just leads with a different combination of approached from within the full suite represented in Kohlberg's model. The problem with Haidt is that he explicitly attacks Kohlberg's model, not on the basis of it being stage theory, but because it is cognitive or reasoning-based, rather than intuitive. Kohlberg's model is also developmental, whereas Haidt only looks at adult reasoning, detached from the developmental trajectory that got the adult to where they are. As such, he ignores the history of a person's learning. It is what one learns, especially as a child, that becomes one's unthinking habits as an adult. Adult intuitions are built upon one's thinking and learning as a child. So, this is a massive blindspot in Haidt's theory. Additionally, the original moral dumbfounding work, upon which the Mark and Julie story is based, was never published under peer review. Indeed, the source videos of people reasoning about these dumbfounding dilemmas were never fully coded, and I'm not aware of any summary of how many of the original videos were coded (30 appear in the write-up) and how the decision was made to stop coding, beyond 'it was time-consuming.' For a thorough analysis of the problems with Haidt's moral dumbfounding, see Cillian McHugh's blog: www.cillianmchugh.com/post/searching-for-dumbfounding/ Oliver Scott Curry's work on Morality as Cooperation is starting to bear fruit, article here: philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2020/07/is-morality-all-about-cooperation.html And Martin Hoffman's 'Empathy and Moral Development' is an excellent read for a fuller read on a moral theory from a researcher who was approximately contemporaneous with Kohlberg but whose book was published at about the time that Haidt came to prominence, and it just might explain human morality better than both: www.ethicalbooksearch.com/uk/books/m/ol:OL23405W-is:9780521580342-is:9780521012973/empathy-and-moral-development-martin-l-hoffman

I disagree with what he said about the trolley and the large man. When the 6 people (5 on one side, 1 on the other) are tied to the tracks there is destined death. When the choice of pushing the man appears he is just an innocent bystander, he isn’t related to the situation. It’s not about the psychology of pushing compared to pulling a lever it’s about the large man not needing to die in the first place.

Breaking into the facility? I would have absolutely understood if the dude had killed the chemist. Does that make me a bad person in other people's eyes? More than likely, to some at least. Will that influence me to change how I feel about my answer? Nope, not even a little. Why? Because if it had been me in that situation, it is an action I would put some serious consideration into.

Your videos are Literally a goldmine.

Hi Dave, nice video but at 4:49, when you say "in stage 3", the graphic for stage 2 still appears on screen. No big deal, I just had slight trouble following because of this

It is interesting how this can relate to trial judges in sentencing people

Solution to trolly problem: switch it to the single person, The others are on the tracks through coercion. The single person is on the tracks due to stupidity. It's natural selection in action.

fabulous... thank you! :)

Hi Dave, great video as always! Do you think morality might also have developed earlier on because it gave us an evolutionary advantage?

The vast majority of psychopaths aren't murderers, clearly empathy is not necessary for morality. All social species have morality; it is simply an evolved behaviour to promote the survival of species by enabling cooperation among their members. The real foundation for morality is the need/desire for cooperation and truth. You have to want/need morality to exist and you have to be able to recognize the reality of the situation in order to make a moral choice. If you don't need the support or cooperation of others you have no motivation to act morally. If you don't know the truth you can't know what the moral choice is, whether you want to engage in it or not. If you believe that witches will suffer an eternity of torment after they die and the only way to save them from this fate is to purify their soul with fire you will believe the only moral option is to burn witches. If you believe vaccines implant mind control chips you will deny your child life saving medical care.

I keep noticing this psycopathy word lately. Dave might have helped me discover a new hole in my life. Dave's filling voids

Another factor in morality is some of it is wired in our DNA. People have a sense of doing wrong without being told it is wrong.

Dear prof, statistics is a very needed subject. Would you can explan it please.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” - Rumi

1 possibly smart man safely standing on a bridge > 5 stupid people standing on a track

Connect the 2 tracks near the end

I know several adults who still operate under Preconventional Morality. Isn't that what proponents of Authoritarianism are about? Obey those power without question. These morality evaluations are interesting and important. It's a shame that morality conversations don't enter politics very often.

in trolley problem, the first thing that comes in my mind is that the 5 people tied on tracks had the reason that they were tied and left to die, whereas that worker on other track was doing his moral job, it would be ethically wrong to kill the man whose family is waiting for him at home

The trolley example always seemed flawed, especially when you bring in the pushing of the fat man part. The situation implies that you KNOW what the outcome is going to be. If you knew the outcome of every action you take, the entire equation would be different.

In the particular question given about stealing the drug or not, I would say it is morally valid to put someone's life over profits, but that perhaps after doing so, admitting to the theft is also the moral thing to do. Just because saving a life is moral, it does not mean the theft is. While you did need to do one in order to achieve the other, that does not necessarily mean that the means are justified even if the ends absolutely are. I do not prescribe to the idea that the ends justify the means. I see them as two different, but linked events. Someone else brought up the whole Trolly Problem. My solution is once again simple given the classic issue of multiple adults versus an infant or something similar. If I am going to break it, I derail the train and hope for the best (assuming I am the only passenger). But to take the problem on face value with the binary of "someone has to die", then it is the death that causes the least calculable harm. I say that carefully because there are many factors that cannot be calculated. So, to be clear, the baby dies. Why? Because it is one short life versus many fuller ones. Many more connections and experiences and relatives are likely to be effected by multiple adults dying than the horrible pain of a single family losing a child to essentially an accident. Of course, the real issue with the Trolly problem is the morality of the one making the decision. As I said, mine is an unbiased calculation as opposed to an emotional consideration. I believe that is the crux of that problem. I am not saying emotions do not matter, but I am saying that there are times that there is no emotionally or ethically solid decision can be made. The problem is literally who is going to die. If you cannot choose yourself, then morality and ethics in general no longer apply. You cannot morally kill innocent people by any standard definition. So instead, harm reduction is the next best option in my opinion. On the incest question. I saw no issue with it. It is culturally taboo, but with all of the specifics laid out (primarily, the near elimination of of pregnancy and the legality of the act), there is literally nothing wrong with sharing intimate physical pleasure in that way. The only reason it feels like it as a gut reaction is we are taught that it is wrong primarily to avoid all of the things that were avoided in the scenario. But honestly, if you think about it, aside from it possibly creating a romantic bond that continues to tempt fate with pregnancy or law breaking, it seems to be a safer alternative to random hook ups or even attempts at creating real bonds through sexual means as a primary drive (this does not usually end well). It would be most closely parallel to having sex with your best friend for no other reason than to bond and for pleasure. You know and trust them, you both consent, all of that, but you have no intention of romantic or parental/spousal involvement beyond that. Your bond is not about the sex, but it also isn't about romantic love which is the case in this theoretical instance. I see nothing wrong with it outside of social taboo.

7:14 Well, of course they are. Here is an obvious example as to why that might as well be a good thing: You and your friend are charged for a crime and have been sentenced to 2 years each. However, if you cast blame on your friend, you will get 1 year, and he will get 5 years. If he does that, the same rules apply. He gets 1 year and you get 5. If you both incriminate the other, you both get 5 years. If you both stay silent, you both get 2 years as was originally planned. What do you do? The choice I would make here, driven by emotion and compassion, is to remain silent. I know my friend, being my friend, will not betray me, and if he does, then it's the same as if I betrayed him too. I got 5 years. But the logical choice would be to go with the risk and incriminate him, because you really cannot be sure what he would say. In this case you can get either 1 year or 5 years, and it's 50/50 chance. However, in previous case, you can get 2 years or 5 years, which is again a 50/50. So choosing to incriminate him is a logical option, one which I would never pick.

Read ‘The Republic’ by Plato.

Let it go straight and then have it loop back around. Fairness.

Like everything you make, this is top notch material Dave. Your channels make learning easy, how I wish your videos had existed in my formative years as it likely would have made me give a shit and enjoy the pursuit of a full education.

I'm sick and tired of the second version of the trolley problem. It is morally wrong to throw the guy to the tracks because there is a better option where all the harm only falls on a willing person: you can jump yourself to the track to stop the train. If you don't have the will to sacrifice yourself for strangers, you don't have the right to demand the same on other, much less force them against their will. And in both cases, the only real difference is whether your have an active involvement in the events or not. You are not responsible for the events that led to the people to be stranded in the tracks, nor the train to be out of control, so you don't have a moral duty to intervene in the situation at all, and if you do, you become responsible for your actions. You can change the problem a bit to see the stupidity of the basic assumptions; for instance you can be a doctor and have 5 terminal patients needing organ transplants to survive and you also have a healthy patient matching the 5 terminal cases. Is it morally correct to kill that healthy patient to save the other 5? As you can see, it is the exact same problem, but most people will give you a completely different answer.

the practical form of morality (the theoretical form) is power

The trolley problem is one of those conceived by people without engineering knowledge. Just turn the switch again while the trolley is on top of it, it will probably derail if its fast but simply stop if it is slow. Which brings us back to the point, a problem can be thought trough while not being confronted with it, but how much worth does this have ? Does this actually allow us to judge any decision made by the person that had to decide in split seconds ? How moral is it to judge a decision from the comfy armchair with all the time in the world to ponder over it ? Which pretty much puts us in the position to accept the fact that morals are also prone to opportunities, some have the opportunity to decide with proper morals, some do not even have the opportunity to realize there was a dilemma to begin with. Time, knowledge sometimes even just plain money often gets in the way of morals, not because the people involved decide against morality, but simply because they have not the means to make an informed decision. Philosophical examinations of reality rarely takes this very real problem into account, which makes many of their conclusions utterly worthless in the face of the reality of life. It is worthless because it does not take things into account that are very important but cannot be standardized and idealized, like the bad joke in which a physicist has a solution but only for perfectly spherical chickens in a vacuum. Thats what many moral dillemmas and most reflections on morality are, a solution for spherical chickens in a vacuum.

The trolley dilemma is a bit flaud... Because there is one big difference between pushing the fat man in front of the trolley or pulling a lever. With pulling a lever you will be sure you diverted the train to the other track and save the people. But you won't know up front if pushing a fat man in front of a trolley would stop it. If I would be 100% sure that the fat man would stop the trolley, and I would not end up in jail for it, then I would push the fat man. Unless the people on the tracks are loved ones, then I would push the fat dude regardless if I would end up in jail or not. But if the 5 people are bad people or people I hate/ do not like, then I would not sacrifice the life of an innocent fat man. There are so many parameters that would influence my acts and reasoning behind them.

In this particular example of the Trolley situation, I would create a third option- rush to untie the 5 people on the track. No one dies. Problem solved. Sometimes we have to create our own solutions.

In the case of the -incestoid couple-, the research leaves out two important factors - this braking rules can cause them to break other rules and laws because it excites them, and if people know somehow about that, it can cause a big harm to them and others in many ways

In this video, the trolley uses a pantograph, simply cut the power from the catenary and the trolley can't move. Also AWS, TPWS, and Vigilance systems still Emergency Stop the train if a driver is out, they are also multiple Emergency Brake Valves along the train that if triggered apply the brakes to max power. If the trolley problem happened in real life, I would be more concerned about the safety violations and the overall negligence by the transportation company, driver, and passengers aboard. Even if the conductor was the only one, the train can still be stopped. Even if, it'd try to free the people on the tracks, and remote switching station are ONLY FOR STAFF! Which I am not, so if you have access to the remote switch, you're breaking the law. Also 300-1000 pounds of raw manly meat is not stopping a tram that pulls over 20 to 30 tons.

There are 3 selfish primal rules that allow us to survive 1) Survive through fight or flight and hunting for food. 2) Reproduce to continue the legacy 3) Use as little effort possible to achieve 1 and 2. Number 3 is the selfish part but it helps you to use as little energy as possible so if you are starving you conserve energy but it leads you to immoral activities like theft of food from others and other more darker things. We have developed higher minds over the years that tell us the the long game is better than the short one so we became social and choose not to always do number 3. Also number 1 needs to be in moderation. We can't hunt the food source until it is gone we must use quotas so if we are fed then the rest is excess.

Disgusting/Wrong is what I’ve heard some people, and which I refer to as, the ick factor. I find it the least reliable means of determining right and wrong.

Capitalism is a economic system. Laws are just rules. Both can be moral but not necessarily so. I'd break into the pharmacy.

I recommend everybody to read "The Righteous Mind" from Haidt.

Morality is nothing more than the science of Judging Human Action. Religion has its talons firmly embedded in the subject because it is the only remnant of control left to them. It is a science plain and simple. We judge EVERYTHING we do against some standard of what is considered correct and proper. From building a home to handling the issues of survival, everything we do is judged against a moral code. Every moral code is made up of 3 parts: the Goal, the Actions that lead to the attainment of that goal, and rules that qualify the actions as virtues. All people have one goal in common: Survival. The actions necessary to attain survival are the survival virtues: Choice, Seeking the Truth, Self Defense and creating a survival identity (a career for a person in society).

Well, guess my moral compass doesn't work like others, i.e. not from gut feeling. Because if I cannot come up with a logical and pretty much irrefutable justification for a moral decision, then this is not my viewpoint, this goes down to as basic of a thing as "why is it wrong to hurt (or even worse, kill) other humans?". Which makes me a terrible person for split second decisions about moral problems. You gave a good example, my answer to it would have been "As long as they do not harm anyone, I don't care, so it is okay." I think there should be a feeling based set of base assumptions in terms of morals, the rest should be propositional calculus if possible. Most people do not follow this concept. Most people follow their feelings exclusively when it comes to morals. The example with killing one guy to save 5 is harder but my decision would still be to sacrifice him as long as the chance of this causing saving the life of 5 other people is as certain as the sun rising in the morning. Though due to it being harder, if it is a split second decision, I might miss the opportunity, to be fair. So I have *some* empathy.

The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

This reminds me a bit of the phrase "die a hero or live long enough to become the villain", and a famous interview made to a rural communist politician wannabe: "If you had two mansions, what would you do?" "Easy, one for me and one for the communist party" "Okay, and if it were two BMWs?" "Easy, one for me and one for the communist party" "Okay, and if it were two hens?" "No, in that case, the two hens are mine" "Why not sharing one with the communist party, like with the mansion and the BMW?" "Because I DO have two hens"

I don’t understand how with the example of pushing a man on the tracks, not pushing him is linked to empathy because of the man, but pushing him is not linked to empathy for the group you’re saving.

If myself or those close to me are threatened, I'll do what I need to save them and figure out how to moralize later, but if a stranger is threatened, my willingness to intervene depends on a sort of cost/ benefit analysis. Put me in a trolley problem where all I have to do is pull a lever and instead of a large group of people dying a fraction of the same number but different people die, none of them are people I care about and neither side has say a higher percentage of children or such, and I have no 3rd option, I'll pull it. Demand I pull a Saw-esque self-mutilation, someone I care about better be on the chopping block or I'll just wait out the timer. Granted, there is one family member who I know would be upset if I let others die to save him (old, terminal disease, christian, etc) so I'd probably sacrifice him in such a situation and cry myself to sleep afterwards, but any other situation where someone I care about is at risk we'd need ludicrous tragedies if I didn't give them up to make me sacrifice someone I cared about (even my jerk brother-in-law). EDIT: also, any time someone wants to do something in private, my response is "live and let live" so long as nobody is being hurt, including via enrichment (e.g. paying for access to a weird video encouraging whoever made it to make more)

I think the "fat man" version of the trolley problem is flawed because it carries too much uncertainty into the problem. Can you push a fat man off the bridge in time? Will he actually stop the trolley? Couldn't you just throw yourself off the bridge? The base version forces a pretty fixed one or many decision. The modified one not only forces you to decide whether to actively harm someone not currently involved, but also lays many ways that your intervention might fail, which muddies the water quite a lot. I think it is hard to pick out how much of the fat man scenario changes the answer because of the change from passive to active involvement and how much is because of the ways in makes the scenario less certain. Of course in the "real world" the answer is to throw the switch after the first set of trolley wheels have passed. Attempting to derail the trolley and saving all involved is even "better" than choosing one over many. You might fail, but the more comfortable moral choice is to attempt to save them all.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6

i love some of these, but they're rather simple. the study across generations is fairly insightful though, if i think about it, i can probably narrow down at about what points i would have chosen differently based on age. the actual problems presented are rather... bland if you can separate emotion from the situation. the brother and sister thing? no, that's not morally wrong. if they desired to procreate, that would be negligence in potentially inflicting their child with disabilities. if they wanted to maintain a relationship like that, it would definitely be looked down upon, because the likelihood of them adding to society a non-genetically defunct child would be lower, and as a species, we like higher functioning individuals. as an experiment? go for it, just be aware of the consequences of dealing with other people that are too emotional. the trolley problem? in the actual scenarios, saving the 5 would always be better based off one piece of information, 5 people are more likely to continue the species than one is. now, when you start examining the possibilities, it makes it harder and harder to actually decide. if i can see the people, i now make choices based on what kind of things i can read. is the single person a senior citizen? do any of the 5 people look like they're going to progress man kind, or are all five of them old, deformed, mentally dampened, etc. single old person on the line vs 5 people where they seem normal? easy, bye old person. do i know the old person is a scientist in the field of biology about to make a breakthrough that'll extend human life by 50 years? that still depends on the other five, but now they have to look like prime specimens of human. the research likely still exists so someone else can continue, but without their total knowledge, it would be set back. i have a better time setting emotional choices aside when it comes to measuring against what i believe humanity capable of. at that point, the question is, what's my morality? morally, the human race progressing is more important than any one person, or group of people, in my mind. destructively so. purge? sounds good. getting the billionaires noticed for being useless, and them 'eaten by the poor?' yep. non-petty crimes punished by death? yep. while on the other hand, requiring proof or the executioner gets executed? yep. could be i'm just a dick. could be most of the political arena doesn't understand that there are better things than money. could be that people are too soft. i dunno!

Sit back and enjoy the show as chaos ensues. Apparently due2my frontal lobe damage "empathy" was a confusing word. "Psycopathy" I'm still unsure of that definition.

My gut reaction to the bro and sis problem was they're not hurting anyone so whatever they did nothing wrong just kind of gross.. Also, to me pushing the guy and pulling the lever seems the same to me since my behavior chose someonss fate. My instinct is do I know any of the people? Id be more likely to save somebody I care about. Or try to see if there's a way to get the trolly to stop some other way.

With the incest one, the way I view it is, I personally see it as wrong. But I recognize that I am not an arbiter of what 2 consenting adults can do. So I accept that even though I disagree with what they did, they were not wrong to do it. Things like the trolley problem are unrealistic and oversimplified, and neglect the very real possibility of third options. I'd say with that one, there is no right or wrong choice, because no matter what you do you are trying to save lives. As I've heard in Doctor Who "sometimes you can't save everyone".

Easy answer Switch the track after the front wheels pass the switch point but before the rear wheels do and the trolly will derail.

Has there ever been 1 person tied to trolley tracks let alone 5, and how do you tie someone to trolley tracks anyways? Seems like it would be quite difficult to pull off, I mean you would need at least 10 tier uppers (assuming at least 2 per person since it would be extremely challenging for one person to hold down and tie one person to trolley tracks, which seems impossible in of itself, I mean have you ever looked at a trolley track? its imbedded into the roadway there really is nothing available to wrap the cordage around to tie a proper knot, and then there is the question of what type of cordage to use or would zip ties be more suitable. And you mean to tell me no passerby’s stopped to inquire as to why 5 people were being tied to trolley tracks.

I personally find the "fat man" example to be inappropriate, poorly constructed, for the intended goal (to show the difference in morality dependent on situation). Because for me the set up looks so far-fetched that other concerns do not allow to make the choice with the same certainty the first trolley example does. There you KNOW for sure that the trolley won't get to five people (unless the switch malfunctions of course), while the other person on the track might still have a chance to survive. With the fat man you inevitably start doubting: what if I won't be able to push him on time, what if he falls to the side of the track, what if it's not enough to stop the trolley etc. Because you are asked to put yourself not in a spherical vacuum of abstract math, but in a situation where your real-life sensibilities and intuition has to decide your actions, and that intrinsically ties it to the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. So, even if you are told to BELIEVE that it's gonna work 100%, it is in human nature to doubt when there's not enough evidence or life experience to support some wild claim. And that is why it's not so easy to make the same choice in this case as with the switch. It's strange that those who made up this example don't understand such small but extremely important parts of reasoning, when they might drastically change the outcome. Also, at 13:40 you present a completely different take on the problem, because the initial in question in the trolley problem was "what do you do?", but not "is it morally wrong?". You cannot mix these two things up, because it can be simultaneously morally wrong, but necessary to do. In fact, the same applies to the Heinz problem, where you can say that it's morally wrong to steal the cure but not doing it is even worse. So, is it really a research on morality when people are offered to choose from two evils? Does it really speak about their empathy or just about common sense when they pick the lesser evil out of two? People are complex beings and don't have to believe that what they do is absolutely right and 100% good if they can still reason that it has to be done for the good of others. Trying to persuade yourself that you are morally right when you do a wrong thing is somewhat childish, but, actually, seems quite prominent in the American ways of thinking and behaving. One can only suspect that the case is deeply rooted in the centuries of brainwashing by Christianity that instills black-and-white thinking and self-righteousness in people. You should know it better than anyone, Dave, after dealing with all those wackos from DI and such.

Theres a Realism element missing from the "defenestrate big dude" trolley problem. Legal repercussions. I think most people would choose inaction, because not only is pushing dude, 100% gonna kill him. You are also probably gonna go down for it and "i did it to save the other people" just isnt going to stand up legally

Explain and define 'less than ideal moral choices'? According to who?

or, to put the trolley car problem in a real world situation, the decision of the US to continue the air war against Japan using atomic weapons was a calculated decision to force Japanese surrender before an Allied invasion would have resulted in the deaths of millions of people, most of them Japanese civilians had the Allies followed up a naval blockade by an invasion. Rarely acknowledged: the Chinese had, on average from 1937 until Japanese surrender, suffered an average of about 180,000 killed (not wounded, not MIAs) every month of the war. Not to engage in post hoc reasoning, but US casualties were underestimated because US intelligence vastly underestimated the number of Imperial army numbers. So the responsible people were the Japanese Emperor and government, and the guy responsible for track maintenance and the guy who was responsible for switching operations in the trainyard. The trolley car problem seems artificial and juvenile.

The problem I see with the "pushing man" part is that the math is wrong. I mean your brain calculates, when it's the lever option, that the lever will indeed move the train to the other track. But maybe our brain calculates that it seems highly implausible that a trolley will be stopped by just some fat guy, so us pushing probably feels even more immoral.

One thing I know about morality is that it can be eroded by poverty. Third world countries have higher crime rate. Here in Philippines, crime rate is high, childporn sold by parents to foreign countries is getting worse.

Trouble with the trolley ehy? (Read as the pellican in spyro 2)

Can you (or someone) explain objective vs. subjective morality? I am told that morality is objective. But I find that hard to come to terms with. For example, if we say that its objectively immoral to kill someone, then no matter the situation, the killer will be acting immorally. However if killer is forced to kill because someone is coming at their child with a knife, wouldn't that subjectively be a situation where you would excuse the killer? Or would you objectively still say that the killer performed an immoral act regardless of the circumstance? I feel like I might just be confusing terms or definitions so would be glad if someone can ELI5.

How moral is Mr. 700 papers?

A question about the prisoner's dilemma. Is it even immoral to cooperate with the cops?

Here's a twist to the trolley dilemma: what if the one person you would kill to save the others was your own mother?