The only problem with your good place reactions is they don't come frequently enough.

The importance of the Trolley Problem is not to come to a conclusion, but to force you to ask questions about why you believe what you believe. It's essentially method of interrogating what is ethical, and whether we believe what we believe because of logic, visceral reaction, or something else. In the end, you're not supposed to come out of it with an answer, but with more questions.

If there ever was an episode of television written specifically for Tyler, its this one 😂

Eleanor stuffing her face with shrimp while saying, "Yeah, we can't be bought!" cracks me up every time. 😄

My favorite episode of the show. But I hate to argue with people so I try not to debate the trolley problem, but I love how it's explored in the context of this show. The episode won a Hugo Award for best short form *dramatic* presentation.

I agree, without context most of these made up scenarios don't really mean much. Also, I would absolutely screw over the 5 people on the tracks if the single person on the other one is my daughter or something. We humans can't be completely neutral in these situations.

the bit where you sped yourself up was hilarious because i already watch all videos on 2x speed for adhd reasons. you sounded remarkably like i would imagine a talking bunny would.

William Jackson Harper did actually end up making Chidi's Kierkegaard rap, it's on The Good Place KZfaq channel

Michael switching gears and admitting he feels lost and scared moves me. I know there's always a possibility that he's still trying to trick people, but I really believe him when he says it the second time. Ted Danson acted the hell out of that speech, with the speech from sarcasm to scared. I think when I first saw this episode, I actually got a little teary. (Which probably means Michael would find me really easy to manipulate. Damn it.)

*tiny squeal* I've been waiting for this one! The only scenario missing from this is if the person in charge of the trolley is a doctor. Interestingly enough, this is the first episode where we see Chidi make a firm and decisive choice within seconds of learning something. All that practice manning the trolley might have been useful. So, everyone had growth moments in this episode.

Context is important, but the setup of the trolley problem is meant to provide as a PREMISE that the only two choices are to kill five people through inaction, thus making you only indirectly responsible, versus becoming DIRECTLY responsible for the death of one person in order to save five. It is essentially a question of whether the ends justify the means; in the doctor scenario, for example, you're thinking of a modern hospital with proper medical equipment and time to explore other options, but it is easy enough to make the context fit the premise. Perhaps you're a doctor at a hospital in Gaza that has just been bombed, with all the phone lines and half the equipment down, and only a ten minute window to make the decision while trapped by rubble in a room where all you have access to is the six people in question. That's the thing: in order for it to be a true trolley problem, you cannot play with the context in a way that changes the premise of the problem itself. Changing the details of the people involved and your relationship to them doesn't change the premise, so that's fair game, and that's where you get into some pretty interesting insights concerning the morality and ethics of the person presented with the problem. Because the truth is, almost no one is going to be able to choose one or the other consistently; it is ALWAYS going to be a question of what contexts we find it acceptable to do a bad thing for good reasons, and what contexts we find it unacceptable. And there's always a way to balance it back out; you make the one person a saint who has a 50% chance of finding the cure for cancer, I counter by making the five people young children. You make the one person a criminal who has done horrific things, I counter by making the five people devil worshippers who each have a 10% chance to kill someone in the future if they don't die right now. One could argue that learning how the contexts shape the choice is the true point of the exercise.

The trolley variant of the problem is very simple. Would you rather be a bystander to 5 deaths or make the decision to actively participate in a single murder?

God you might genuinely be my favorite TV series tractor. The amount of analysis and elaboration of your points is very interesting and I appreciate how little clips you use, I come to these reactions for your thoughts, not to watch an episode

The following is about my thought process journey, not demanding others reach the same conclusions. Disclaimer over. I was supposed to have jury duty last month and I was thinking hard about how I’d be on a jury. How much and what sort of evidence it would take to convince me. I’m American and I know our prison system is not rehabilitative. If I sent someone to jail, it would be to protect society, not help that person. So I’d have to KNOW that person was a danger (as in “no reasonable doubt”). So then I started thinking, “Ah, but what if in trying to protect one innocent defendant, you get it wrong and ten civilians suffer?” This went on for the whole of January and it was messing me up. I’ve always been against capital punishment because I believe I’d rather nine guilty people live if it saves one not guilty. But when it became just sending them to prison and the element of society with other people came into it, I got twisted up. Finally, one day, I had my own Holy Motherforking Shirtballs moment and said, “This is the dang trolley problem!” It’s silly, but that chilled me out. I knew I’d adhere to reasonable doubt, erring on not sending someone potentially (but not definitely) guilty to prison rather than risking sending someone not guilty to prison. Felt very relieved. Next day jury duty was canceled. 😂

The primary difference between the regular trolley problem and the doctor killing 1 healthy person scenario (aside from doctors taking a professional oath not to harm their patients), is that the context of the doctor one has knock on effects for the rest of society. You'd severely erode public trust in medical institutions if being murdered for your organs was a common risk of going to the doctor. The trolley version doesn't have that violation of trust issue.

I think the difference between the trolley problem and the doctor example is that with the trolley, in both cases, the trolley will kill someone - there’s nothing you can do about it, and the deaths, however many, will not be on your hands. Changing the direction in order to kill fewer people is clearly the right move, even if emotions might make you decide otherwise depending on context. In the doctor example, the choice is between actively murdering one person, instead of just giving the best care you can to provide comfort to five terminally ill patients. In that scenario, you would be choosing to take a life, rather than simply choosing the path of least destruction.

Think your desire to come back and re-address the trolley problem is a great example of what it's for; training our capacity for moral reasoning. Over and over again, I see people presented with the trolley problem and they struggle because people aren't used to *thinking* about ethical choices. For the most part, people just have intuitions and feelings and then just reverse-engineer an excuse for why the answer they came to without reasoning is actually reasonable after all. Or they'll feel moral discomfort with the very notion of making an ethical choice and do any number of rhetorical backflips to dismiss the issue as somehow invalid to avoid real consideration. To be more specific to this video, I think the gut reaction that both Tahani and most people have that makes the doctor example worse than the basic trolley problem (assuming that we accept that, as part of the abstraction, all but the two options are not viable) is the *degree of intervention.* Disassembling someone for parts is a much more hands-on, visceral-feeling murder than pulling a lever. I'm convinced that that's the *real actual moral consideration* that's going on in most people's brains when they struggle with that one. Whether they're aware of it or not. Anyway, I recommend a little, mostly text-based game called Trolley Problem inc. It just throws a series of these trolley problem variations at you and asks you to consider your choices. Does it make it different if you have to push someone in front of the Trolley, rather than pull a lever to divert it? What if the five people trapped on the tracks are trespassing teenagers who ignored warning signs? What if the Trolley has a bomb and you're actually considering diverting the path and killing 100 people to save 500? If you do a lot of these, I think you eventually realise that the way most people come to moral conclusions isn't by reasoning at all.

I used to think the trolly and doctor situations were different, but after more thought, I now think they really are the same. Choice A - do nothing and passively let the five people die. Choice B - purposely kill the one person to save the other five. We can have different *reasons* for the choice we make - and how we justify our choices to ourselves and/or others - but we only have the 2 choices. Yes a doctor may come up with additional choices, but if we are going to add more parameters, we could also apply that to the trolley, like maybe derail it so it doesn't hit anyone.

One of my favourite episodes of the show. The humor here is insane lol

The question with the trolly problem is, do you take an action that will end a life to say five others or do you take no action and allow five people to die so that one person doesn’t get killed trying to save them. Even on the trolley, when you decide to switch that train, you are actively deciding that the person on that track is going to get killed so that those five other people will live. It’s exactly like Doctor is choosing to kill one healthy person to say five not healthy people people who are going to die naturally, unless someone intervenes where is the other one you’re taking an action to end the life of somebody who isn’t currently on the track to die

Ok, speaking as an English dude, the French do actually automatically deserve to go to the Bad Place. Well done Michael.

If you think about it, the doctor scenario really is the same as the trolley scenario. And both scenarios you must make a decision that will result in either one person, dying or five people dying. In the case of the doctor, if you choose not to take the organs from the healthy person, it means you are making the decision to let the other five people die.

Since the first episode of your reactions ive been waiting for this Especially with seeing how you talk not just about the episodes but also engage with the subject matter This did not disappoint

In my opinion, it is the same thing to kill one person and save five with the doctor and the trolley. The only difference is the level of personal aspect in the killing. In the trolley problem you have to actively pull a lever to choose to kill one in order to save the 5. It's an active motion by you that leads to the death of a human being. Even though it saves 5 people. Assuming those 5 patients are also already on track to die. The doctor one hits harder, I believe, because it's, as you said, in cold blood. Otherwise I think the dilemma is the same dilemma. We can't assume there are other options, that moves us away from the dilemma (like can you derail the train?) - we have to assume there's just the two options.

I have been waiting with much excitement for you to react to this episode!!!

Everyone shush! My program’s on!

The really interesting thing I find is, asking the Doctor 5 patients scenario right after the trolley problem psychologically primes you to subconciously somewhat dehumanize the patients. In the trolley problem, you literally only have two options, pull the lever or don't. You can't warn the people on the tracks, or talk it over with them, or do literally anything other than pull the lever or not. The doctor patients scenario is obviously radically different because of this, but you're already primed a certain way because of the trolley problem question right before, which is what I think really throws people off when trying to answer

Loved the reaction. Also, loving the new camera angle.

Pretty sure Chidi said " why not " not because he was showing an answer but rather to probe his students' reason for the answer she gave. Which basically the whole point of the thought experiment. Not to have an answer but provide a test bed for one to examine the complexity of moral delimas and to acknowledge that "right and wrong" become harder than the dichotemy suggests.

great commentary, comfy hoodie.

I'd say that the difference between the trolley problem and the doctor problem is that the trolley problem encourages people to stay off of trolley tracks, while the doctor problem encourages people to stay out of hospitals. Society needs to function in such a way that people's self-interest serves society as a whole, or the whole thing will collapse.

Love your Ewok pullover, Tyler!

The problem with consequentialism is that we don't know the consequences of our actions. What if the one person is a genius who just solved the cure for cancer in their head and would save a hundred million lives. What if pulling the lever gives you an 80% chance of killing the one person but the other had a 50% chance of killing the five? It's why largely individuals can't use consequentialism. As a society yes, collectively we can make those decisions to average out the probable results.

One of the best episodes!

Simply getting a job takes that job opportunity away from an unknown many people. Buying from a company supports people who got a job there and does not support unknown many other companies. Every breath you take is another trolley. We can talk about utilitarianism and other philosophy, but at the end of the day, we do what is practical. I believe most people would flip the lever.

Interesting points.

The troll problem, comes up anytime their is road construction. It's also brought up in school for kids/ teens that might want to take a cool photo on empty train tracks or in other dangerous places

I find it hilarious how he realizes he's a version of Jason that went to college

The doctor scenario is different from the trolley scenario. The doctor may be just as deprived of options in certain disease states, and just as short on time as the trolley driver. The difference is that the trolley is inevitably going to kill people on the track, so it's a matter of preventing the most harm. Whereas four of the patients are inevitably going to die early without extreme measures, and one random healthy person within reach is going about their day. The doctor is choosing between allowing four diseases to take their natural course despite humanity's best efforts, or actively causing harm to one healthy person. I could go on about the questionable quality of life for the four patients depending on the organs transplanted, but that is tangential. Examining ethical dilemmas are part of the entrance qualifications for medical training. Now imagine the impossible circumstance of trying to choose which seriously ill COVID patient gets to have the last ventilator, and how to explain that to the family. A bit heavy, I know. I suppose I'm a bit salty about the comparison. :)

I think there's a bit of a problem with us deciding who is a good person. What if the murderer has or will be rehabilitated? Anyway. Moving on.

7:55: I am more of a fan of the version of the trolley problem were you are the one person on the track, and there are 5 on the other track, and only you can pull the lever to change the tracks. Do you sacrifice yourself to save the 5, or do you just let the train hit the 5?

For me the trolley problem typically boils down to I’m choosing to kill the one to save the others. Even if it’s a greater good I am still essentially taking over for god/nature and ending someone’s life. Whereas if I just sit back and do nothing, yes those other 5 people die. But I didn’t make it happen. They were gonna die anyways.

The trolley problem sometimes feels like a false dichotomy 8:22

Eleanor would have excelled as a demon.

EDIT: Nevermind, I posted too quick! You came around to this exact same conclusion like 2 minutes later in the video haha. We landed on different reasons as to why it *feels* different, but that's the fun of the discussion =) I think what you missed in the doctor situation is that it *is* the same. Disease = trolley, it's set in motion and is going to kill 5 people with inaction. Switching tracks = murder for organ harvesting, you are deliberately choosing which person dies in order to save the other 5. In both cases you know nothing about the potential victims of the trolley, just that action kills 1 and inaction kills 5. You never explained how they were different, you just said "context matters" despite neither situation having any context at all. I believe the thing that makes them different is that in the case of switching the tracks, there's a layer of separation between your action and the consequence in the form of the trolley. "I didn't do it, the trolley did. I just made it less bad." But when you go directly murder someone, it's a lot harder to rationalize it as "I didn't do it, the disease did," despite it having equivalent consequences.

I love how much you dig into the ethics

edit: I had not yet seen your extra clip where you discus more so how both the doctor and the trolley situation are theoretically the same. I understand why you make the question so different as to challenge yourself, but I would personally argue that the more complex question that you put forth is easier to answer than the original, despite that one being simpler. Saying that there are more options as a doctor feels like a scapegoat to what the question is truly about. To what extent should we be allowed to play god? Does the death of one person out way that of the many, or are the multiple lives more valuable despite the fact that the other person is set to survive this incident. You say, "there are more options to explore as doctors", but what if there aren't? No other options, would you kill the one to save the others, or would you accept the death of the many. I'm not sure what i would do personally. I feel that the most moral thing to do is probably let the cart do whatever it will do without intervention because the victim cant consent to sacrificing their life for these people, but if its not 5 people but 10, what would i do? at some point we all draw the line, we all choose to play god, and we all murder one to save many. whether you draw the line at 2 people or 10, we all pull the lever. The Trolley problem is famous for a reason, and thank god that we get more context in real life. But you never know who you're sacrificing and who you are saving... (great video btw)

IMO It's also important to keep in mind the other peoples' agency and actions before deciding, if the 5 workers on the main track are actively ignoring safety regulations and working on a live track while the other one is on a closed track then i'd say letting the trolley kill the 5 is the right thing to do because otherwise you're actively killing a "safe" innocent person to save 5 "unsafe" lawbreakers. Same reason the doctor killing one to save 5 would be wrong, or why i wouldn't swerve to save a jaywalking mother/child and kill an innocent bystander grandma(another common variation on the problem)

Gotta agree, out of the four presents, Jason got the best one.

Eleanor has an infinite amount of shrimps and she still can't bring herself not to finish the nasty white chocolate one, what a shrimp fiend!

the only way in which the doctor situation is even remotely comparable to the trolley situation is if it’s like a saw trap lmao. a doctor wakes up in a room, there’s 6 people on tables knocked out and prepared for surgery. she’s informed of the problem, told nothing about the people themselves and she can’t wake them up or find a way out of the room. otherwise there’s: 1. you have to ask the 5 people’s families if they’re willing to have a healthy person die to save their loved one. 2. there’s the team assisting the surgery, because doctors don’t do surgery alone lol. 3. in this situation there would 100% be context on who these people are (how old are they, do they have kids, what have they done in the past, what does their future look like?) 4. there’s also the oath that doctors take to do no harm, ect ect. it just doesn’t function as the same problem because of TIME. there’s too much time for it to be considered a split second decision the way the trolley problem is.

Put a pin in your 15:40 ramblings, you'll want to review them in a later episode. Lol ;P

I think the ethical answer to the trolley problem is not to choose either track, but to derail the train. It would likely kill you, but save them. If you decide that one life should be sacrificed to save many lives, then the ethical thing to do is give your own life, not to sign others up for involuntary sacrifice. That kind of action might qualify you for the good place.

Yo

Obviously the theory with the surgeon is objectively different cause you have authority it's your job to operate on humans, you choose the profession and must be prepared for tough decisions. If you are suddenly on the trolley and it's going to kill people you didn't sign up for this you can just let luck decide. The doctor has to act responsibly. Also, about the Michael understanding of moral philosophy, obviously I am not expert like you or well educated but here in the greek equivalent of high school, we had this lesson called "principles of philosophy" and the first thing we learnt is that in order to be able to ask philosophical questions you must lett go all your pre-existing beliefs. Like if you are Christian you cannot apply the religious logic in order to search for the true meaning of "justice" for example. I guess it's very a very basic thing...

I think the difference between the Tram and Doctor situation is how it feels directly killing the one person Like it might feels more directly killing the Person as the Doctor, while killing the one Person with the Tram indirectly (it's more like the Tram is killing them)

I can't connect to the surgeon problem - I just dont understand why the dilemma has to involve a healthy person at all. If all of the patients need a different organ, then allow one of them to die and use their organs to save the rest, and no need to harm anyone healthy at all. You let nature take its course with one person (so it is still slightly different from the trolley problem), but you are still saving more people from their original fate. I can't get past that idea, so I find it difficult to entertain the original premise.

You take a senku ishigami approach to thought experiments. "Check out this psychology quiz. 'There's been a tragic accident, and between your friend, your lover, and yourself only one of you can be saved.' Who would you choose?" "I choose everyone. I'd look for a fundamental rule that'd let me save all of us." "I think the point of the question is more to reveal who's most important to you." "That's ten billion percent obvious. Your book belongs in the trash." I guess it's also the kobayashi maru approach - for those unaware, the kobayashi maru was a simulation at star fleet academy designed to be unwinnable, to teach captains what it's like to accept failure. Captain Kirk hacked the simulation to make it winnable, because he doesn't believe in unwinnable situations. I'm not saying you, senku, or kirk are right - often the point of the exercise is to simplify a situation down to examine something very specific. It's just interesting to see this gordian knot approach has come up in other similar contexts.

How about you know for a fact that those 5 people are actually Nazis, and you don't know anything about the 1 person? Is it still killing that 1 person you know nothing about, and save 5 Nazis because you are saving 5 lives, or you kill the 5 because you know being a Nazi is not a good thing? Or let's say we know that 1 person is not a Nazi. Do we think we should kill 5 Nazis for 1 person who isn't? Like, what I am trying to say is that you can argue it even if we know the context. And technically, it doesn't change the essence of it, you are still making a judgement on the basis of the worth of a life. Numbers, value of the person to the society etc. and it is not possible to get a good answer by just talking/thinking about it, unfortunately Tyler.