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{{a|stats|{{wmc|Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life.jpg|}}}}{{quote|
{{a|stats|{{wmc|Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life.jpg|}}}}{{quote|''Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.''
A runaway trolley is hurtling down a track toward five workers who will certainly be killed if it continues on its course. You are standing next to a point switch. You can divert the trolley onto a side track, saving the five workers, but only at the cost of a sixth person working on the spur line. Should you pull the switch to divert the trolley, actively choosing to save five lives, but at the certain cost of one?
:—Voltaire}}
{{quote|
A runaway trolley is hurtling down a track toward five workers who will certainly be killed if it continues on its course. You are standing next to a point switch. You can divert the trolley onto a side track, saving the five workers, but only at the certain cost of a sixth, who is working on the spur line. Should you pull the switch to divert the trolley, proactively saving five lives, at the certain cost of one?
}}
}}


{{drop|P|hilosophy students ''love''}} the trolley problem. Though introduced in the sixties as a thought experiment about some Roman Catholic moral principle, these days it gets great play when we think about real runaway trams, not metaphorical ones — driverless cars. This intuition pump now functions in the public mind as some kind of live moral dilemma, to be solved (and how could it be solved? It is designed to be insoluble!) before driverless cars can be more widely mandated.
{{drop|P|hilosophy ''loves'' condundrums}} like the trolley problem. Philippa Foot invented it in the 1960s,<ref>''The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect'' (1967)</ref> as a thought experiment to explore the difference in moral qualities between ''co''mmission and ''o''mission. We might, Foot thought, consider it morally permissible to divert the trolley away from the workers, as the death is a foreseeable but unwanted consequence of the action, but not to push someone onto the tracks to stop the trolley even though the outcome would be the same.
{{quote|What if a child runs out in front of a robo-car, inside the total stopping distance for the car? What should the robot do? Should it swerve to avoid the child at the expense of oncoming vehicles? Or carry on, possibly killing the child?}} 


How should we configure this potentially horrific technology? Can we — should we — programme your vehicle in advance to manage the kinds of moral quandary the trolley problem presents?
This is a narrow point, drawn to illustrate a shortcoming in Roman Catholic moral orthodoxy. It has long since been lost on denizens who now trot the problem out when holding forth on real, not metaphorical, runaway trolleys: driverless cars. 


Look: there are plenty of logistical problems and risk allocation issues to be solved before autonomous vehicles can go mainstream for sure, but this ''highly'' artificial hypothetical is not one of them. This is a ''thought experiment'' dreamed up for a philosophy journal. It is not meant to address real-world problems.
{{quote|What if a child runs out in front of an autonomous vehicle? What if the vehicle can avoid the child, but only at the cost of causing some other damage or injury? How should it be programmed? Where all outcomes are unconscionable, how can the vehicle operator ''avoid'' moral culpability?}}
 
Here, the trolley problem presents as a live moral dilemma in need of solution. We are asked to choose, in the abstract and without time pressure, between unconscionable outcome ''A'' and unconscionable outcome ''B''. We can see at once this is an emotive but essentially sterile question. There’s no good answer. A story in which someone necessarily dies holds no moral lesson other than ''don’t do that thing''.
 
Is this a problem in need of solving? Or, in its current context, just philosophical trolling?


====Parallel worlds of science and philosophy====
====Parallel worlds of science and philosophy====
{{drop|B|y design, Philosophy}} professors live in a world entirely disconnected from the actual problems of real human beings. It is useful by comparison to compare the world philosophers live in with the one scientists live in.  
{{Drop|S|cientists live in}} this [[Simple system|simple]], stable world filled to the brim with countless, benign little “[[nomological machine]]s” they have designed, by which everything reliably ''works''. They can predict the period of a swinging object with the pendulum equation, t = 2π√(l/g). They know the pressure and volume of a quantity of gas thanks to Boyle’s law. They can explain the accelerating expansion of the universe with dark matter, dark energy and an arbitrary cosmological constant. [''I don’t think this last one is a great example — Ed''] In the scientists’s world, ''everything'' runs like clockwork.
 
Philosophers inhabit, more or less, a dark inversion of the scientists’ world. Theirs is, instead, a universe of ''insoluble conundrum''. They also fill their space with [[Nomological machine|ingenious devices]], only malicious ones: philosophical contraptions invented ''specifically to bugger everything up''. In the philosophers’ world, ''nothing'' goes according to plan.
 
For each scientific axiom, whirring happily away in its intricate cage, reliably plotting out the forward progress of the world, the philosophers have their obstreperous counterpoints: here, a ''brain in a vat'', there, a ''Chinese room'', over yonder, a ''parallel universe'' — designed to throw the whole edifice into confusion. The ideal world for philosophers is one where nothing works. It affords a licence to sit around arguing ''why the hell not''. This is why they turn up.
 
====Negative-Lindy effect====
{{drop|I|f a philosophical}} conundrum ever cropped up in real life, someone practical would have to ''solve'' it. This would spoil it: a solved thought experiment is like a drunk bottle: all the fun’s gone out of it: it can’t teach you anything. The best way of resisting solution is to not show up in the first place. To keep out of the way of practical people, and make your home in the minds of academic philosophers. To have lasting value, therefore, a philosophical thought experiment must have some kind of ''negative'' “[[Lindy effect]]”.  


Scientists live in this simple, stable world filled with hundreds of benign little [[nomological machine]]s they have designed, and thanks to which everything reliably ''works'': thanks to the pendulum equation, t = 2π√(l/g), we can predict the period of a swinging object. thanks to Boyle’s law we can calculate the pressure and volume of a quantity of gas.
The ''real'' [[Lindy effect]] is a measure of [[Antifragile|antifragility]]: things are “road tested” — that have taken a beating at the hands of children, animals and practical people over time and are still working — are less likely to break in the future. If they had a critical weakness, someone would have found it. Untested, new things are more likely to break. We don’t know yet whether they are fragile. If you had to bet which would last longer, the Pyramids of Giza or the Las Vegas Sphere?


Philosophers inhabit, more or less, a dark inversion of this world: it is also filled with ingenious [[nomological machine|nomological machines]], only they are malicious: they exist — philosophers invent them — ''to bugger everything up'' at the merest opportunity. In the philosophers’ world, ''nothing'' works.
The endurance test for philosophical thought experiments is the opposite:


For each of the scientists’ happy heuristics that illustrate how the world works, the philosophers have their own intricately-crafted intellectual contraptions — here, a ''Brain in a Vat'', there, a ''Chinese Room'', over yonder, a ''Parallel Universe'' — designed to illustrate how, really, it doesn’t. A world where nothing works is an excellent one for philosophers because it means they can sit around arguing ''why not'' and they never have to get on and ''do'' anything.
{{quote|The Negative Lindy Effect: the longer a philosophical thought experiment can survive ''without'' presenting in real life to actual people to be tested, the more resilient it will be.}}


It is a world of imaginary problems Like a, well, parallel universe. Philosophers therefore occupy themselves with rarefied, nomological problems that suit that ascetic vibe.  
Descartes’ brain in a vat. Excellent. Berkeley’s falling tree in a forest. Brilliant. Fully untestable.  
====Negative-Lindy effect====
{{drop|I|f any of }} these philosophical conundrums actually happened in real life, real humans would quickly solve them. For something to have lasting value as a philosophy experiment, therefore, it must have some kind of ''negative'' “[[Lindy effect]]”.  


{{quote|The Negative Lindy Effect: A good test of the quality and resilience of a philosophical thought experiment is how long it can survive in the literature ''without'' ever presenting as a genuine problem in real life to actual people.}}
The Trolley Problem seemed like just such an excellent thought experiment: what kind of real-world event could have all the following qualities? A set of determined future outcomes, unfolding over a period that is long enough for the subject to be able to definitively act with moral clarity in a way that is partly ''but not fully'' remedial, and yet not quite long enough that the subject can problem-solve, engineer a superior outcome, or just warn anyone, while all the time there is no supervening moral agency from anyone else involved in the scenario?


The real Lindy effect: things that have stood the test of time are more likely to continue doing so, while new things are more fragile and likely to become obsolete. The philosophical effect is the opposite. Plato’s cave: brilliant.  
Just one person can act, and they can only pull a switch, or not pull it.


The Trolley Problem is just such an excellent philosophical thought experiment. What kind of real-world event has such a deterministic outcome, over such a short time horizon that is just long enough for a subject to take action that is partly ''but not fully'' remedial, that can be acted on with total moral clarity, and yet there is not enough time to contrive an alternative different solution, or warn anyone, or avert the outcome some other way or, if you can’t, at least communicate to the putative victims, in a scenario in which there is no overriding moral agency from someone else?
This is about as artificial as a problem could be.


=====Artificial certainty=====
=====Artificial certainty=====
The trolley problem assumes that the subject has perfect, certain knowledge of both the present state and the future outcomes on both tracks — that the train is coming, it cannot be stopped, that the only possible variable is points operation and death on one spur or another is certain but no-one else in the scenario has ''any'' knowledge, either of the current status or the future potential.  
Firstly, we are asked to accept that the subject has perfect, absolute ''knowledge'' of the present state and the future outcomes on both tracks — that the train is coming, that it cannot be stopped, that the only possible intervention is her points operation, that death on one spur or the other is inevitable ''and'' that no-one else in the scenario with any moral agency has ''any'' knowledge, either of the current status or the future potential.  


The subject is absolutely certain the affected victims will not survive. ''How''? Can she see them? If so, why can’t she communicate with them? If she can see them, can they not see her? And the on-rushing trolley?
The subject must be ''certain'' that the impacted workers will die. ''How''? Can she ''see'' them? If so, why can’t she ''communicate'' with them? Why can’t they see her?


And ''what are they doing on the train tracks'' in the first place? Are they ''tied down'' there? If so, why are we obsessing about this plainly second-order moral dilemma of the points operator? Should we not be interrogating whoever tied them down? If they are ''not'' tied down, then ''what the hell are they doing''? Can they not pay attention to their own environment? Can they not optimise their ''own'' well-being? Why can’t they get off the tracks? ''Who hangs out on train tracks?'' If they are rail workers, have they not had any HSE training?
Why can’t the workers see anything? Why don’t they get off the tracks?


So, while the subject of the thought experiment is omniscient, necessarily everyone else is ''entirely ignorant'' of every aspect of the scenario going down, and therefore unable to do anything to prevent it.
How about the track operator: can ''she'' not see what is happening?


=====Artificial timeframe=====
=====Artificial timeframe=====
In real life, there will usually be many “intervention points” before a crisis. Where there are not, nor will there be time for abstract moral calculation.
In real life, there are usually many “intervention points” before a crisis. When there aren’t, nor will there be time for abstract moral calculation.


The Trolley Problem artificially compresses moral deliberation into ''an instant'' to close off opportunities for potential problem-solving and communication that would spoil it. It is a hypothetical: it requires the subject to pre-solve a fantastical moral dilemma in the abstract, before it happens, without being allowed to ''change the system to prevent the dilemma arising in the first place''. This is to impose a simple system on a complex problem. The real world is not so bone-headed as to foresee problems and not solve for them in system design.
The Trolley Problem artificially compresses moral deliberation into ''an instant''. It must, to close off opportunities for resourcefulness, problem-solving and communication that would spoil its explanatory force.  


If we know in advance we have an inherent “trolley problem”, we should not wait for a ''literally'' foreseen calamity to happen and only then make a difficult decision. ([[Legal eagle|Legal eagles]]: realising there is a risk and running it anyway is the legal definition of “[[Reckless|recklessness]]”: someone ''would'' be guilty of murder in this hypothetical.) We should re-design the system with fail-safes now. Not redesigning the system is the moral failure, not “pulling or failing to pull a lever”.
The subject must pre-solve a moral dilemma in the abstract but without being allowed to request changes to a necessarily inadequate system to prevent the dilemma from arising in the first place.  


If the time-frame were more realistic, there would be time to problem-solve, warn victims, or contrive other outcomes or just ''communicate''.  
This is to impose a [[simple system]] on a [[Complexity|complex problem]]. The real world would not tolerate such an approach: if we can foresee an adverse outcome — and we can; we are expostulating about it — ''we are obliged to fix it''. This is a minimum standard of system design. Not redesigning the system is the moral failure, not “pulling or failing to pull a lever”.
 
If we ''know'' there is an inherent “trolley problem” in our system design we cannot wait for a ''literally'' foreseen calamity to happen before acting to stop it.
 
Realising there is a risk and running it anyway is the definition of “[[Reckless|recklessness]]”: someone ''would'' be guilty of murder in this hypothetical.


=====Artificial (lack of) social context =====
=====Artificial (lack of) social context =====
The scenario strips away all social and institutional context: Why have we designed the system this way? How have we managed to get to this crisis point without anyone foreseeing it?  
The trolley problem also strips away all social and institutional contexts. Why have we designed the system this way? How have we managed to get to this point without anyone foreseeing it?  


The reason trolley problems are not generally prevalent is because, in the real world, this social context will intervene to prevent the problems arising in the first place. We build systems to anticipate problems. We encounter design flaws once, and solve them. This is the Lindy effect: bad design gets junked.
Trolley problems do not occur in the real world because this social context will intervene to prevent them from arising. We build systems to anticipate problems. We encounter design flaws once and solve them. This is the (good) [[Lindy effect]]: ''Bad designs get junked''. Good ones stand the test of time.


=====Artificial moral agency vacuum=====
=====Artificial moral agency vacuum=====
It reduces moral agency to a single binary choice. It pretends that the many necessarily involved humans have no practical agency to foresee and anticipate events. It asks us to exclude or ignore unstated conditions of far greater moral consequences than the question at hand. Who designed such an inept system? Who tied the prisoners down? Who lost control of the trolley? Our subject is a random bystander with, [[Q.E.D.]], no responsibility for how the situation arose, and for the thought experiment to work we are expected to accept that ''no-one else has any moral agency either''. 
By being made to focus on the switch-puller’s choice, we are forced to overlook real moral failures that led to the situation.  The points operator is, by comparison, a random bystander. Despite bearing ''no'' responsibility for the situation — she neither designed the track, nor operated it, nor scheduled the workers, nor trained them, nor did she cause the runaway trolley — the poor points operator is expected to be omniscient while everyone else with any part in this incipient tragedy is ''entirely, and justifiably, [[Inadvertence|inadvertent]]''.
 
Who designed such an inept system? Who assigned the workers to those dangerous conditions? Who lost control of the trolley? Why weren’t they looking out? Why were there no fail-safes, warning procedures or circuit breakers? Why was the track not designed to prevent accidents like this? Did no one think this could happen?


====False paradox====
====False paradox====
{{drop|Y|ou all know}} how JC loves a [[paradox]]; well, this is a false one. There is no real-world scenario where the trolley problem can play out as a genuine moral conundrum. I feel a table coming on, readers.
{{drop|Y|ou all know}} how JC loves a [[paradox]]; well, this is a false one. There is no real-world scenario where the trolley problem can play out as a genuine moral conundrum.  
{{small|80}}
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|+ Caption text
{{aligntop}}
{{aligntop}}
! Rowspan="3" | Player !! Rowspan="3" | Responsible for !! Colspan="3"| Time of awareness  
! Rowspan="3" | Player !! Rowspan="3" | Responsible for !! Colspan="3"| Time of awareness  
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| System Operator || Worker safety, track access, safe rostering, risk assessment||Could ensure: safe work procedures, worker positioning, track access control Maintenance schedule|| Could initiate: emergency protocols, worker evacuation, system shutdown|| Too late
| System Operator || Worker safety, track access, safe rostering, risk assessment||Could ensure: safe work procedures, worker positioning, track access control Maintenance schedule|| Could initiate: emergency protocols, worker evacuation, system shutdown|| Too late
{{aligntop}}
{{aligntop}}
| Track workers || Challenging unsafe conditions, being expert, keeping a look out for danger. || Raise issues. Quit! || Evacuate track || Pray
| Track workers || Challenging unsafe conditions, being experts, keeping a lookout for danger. || Raise issues. Quit! || Evacuate track || Pray
{{aligntop}}
{{aligntop}}
| Switch Operator  || Looking after his switch
| Switch Operator  || Looking after his switch
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Of all these moral, practical and systems considerations here — there are a lot — the hapless switch operator’s position is the ''least'' vexed. If it gets to the point where the only judgment remaining is “whether to throw the switch” and ''no one else'' is already fully culpable for putting the switch operator in the position where the only person who can save the day is her — and it won’t be: it can’t ''possibly'' be — and if, [[Q.E.D.]], the switch operator has had no time to think about it, much less take any evasive action either, then it necessarily follows that the switch operator will not be responsible either.
Of all these moral, practical and systems considerations here — there are a lot — the hapless switch operator’s position is the ''least'' vexed. If it gets to the point where the only judgment remaining is “whether or not to throw the switch” and ''no one else'' is already fully culpable for putting the switch operator in that position, and if, [[Q.E.D.]], the switch operator has no time to think about it either, then it necessarily follows that the switch operator will not be blamed for doing nothing.  
This will just be one of those things. ''Shit happens''. ''Accidents'' happen. The switch operator does not have enough time much less information to make the moral calculus to intervene, and realistically is not going to.
 
This will just be one of those things. ''Shit happens''. ''Accidents'' happen. The switch operator did not have the time or information to make the moral calculus to intervene, and realistically never would.
====The driverless cars====
====The driverless cars====
{{drop|A|pplying all this}} to the autonomous car proposition, there is a false equivalence. Why does the trolley problem not arise for human drivers? Because, unlike TESLAs, humans aren’t perfect rationalising machines. They don’t run on GeFORCE chips. They cannot flawlessly assimilate three terrabytes of data coming at them in real time — was it a balloon? A fox? A dog? A child? — within a microsecond, calculate a flawless Rawlsian moral outcome, calculate the brake horsepower, vectors, momentum etc and communicate that executive decision to the machine. If humans react at all, they may blindly stomp on the anchors without a conscious thought at all. Most likely they will just flatten whatever ran out in front of them and that will be that. Humans can’t be judged because they lacked the faculties to do anything else.  
{{drop|A|pplying all this}} to autonomous cars, we see is a false equivalence. Why does the trolley problem not arise, already, for human drivers? Because, unlike TESLAs, humans aren’t perfect rationalising machines. They don’t run on GeForce chips. They cannot flawlessly assimilate, triangulate and arbitrate on terabytes of real-time data within a microsecond — was it a child? A fox? A dog? A balloon? — calculate the brake horsepower, vectors, momentum ''and'' a flawless Rawlsian moral outcome and communicate its executive decision to the drive train in time to vouchsafe the appropriate outcome.  
 
If a human driver reacted at all, he may blindly stomp on the anchors without a conscious thought at all. Most likely he will just flatten whatever ran out in front of him and that will be that. Terrible accident. but he can’t be judged because he lacked the faculties to do any better.
 
And, realistically, a hyper-intelligent autonomous machine ''still'' wouldn’t be able to identify the obstacle, identify the alternatives, evaluate the potential damage for each outcome, and assess their relative moral consequences and correctly execute the most morally profitable manoeuvre in the split second available.
 
So why are we obsessing about autonomous cars? Behold a [[paradox]]: data suggest, strongly, that driverless cars are materially safer than human-operated ones. They promise a better set of outcomes than ones we presently tolerate. Yet because of their cognitive limitations, human drivers do not — apparently — suffer from the trolley problem. We are finding a moral conundrum in a [[fractal]] segment of [[spacetime]] previously inaccessible to moral discourse. By obsessing with hypothetical thought experiments we delay progress on a statistically better outcome. {{quote|''Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.''}}


So, for one thing, we are finding a moral conundrum in a fractal segment of [[spacetime]] previously inaccessible to moral discourse. It would be long gone before the moral passions arrived on the scene. But for another, a hyper-powered superintelligent machine ''still'' wouldn’t be able to identify the obstacle, identify the alternatives (veer left? veer right?), evaluate the potential collateral damage for each outcome, and assess their relative moral consequences (is an adult worth more than a child? less? what are the criteria? what if they are roughly the same? what if you don’t know?) and correctly execute the most morally profitable manoeuvre.
====Too cute====
====Too cute====
{{drop|T|he trolleyproblem}} is ''too'' cute to be a useful [[nomological machine]], even for philosophers. That the scenario pits two plainly uneven scenarios makes it ''easy'' for philosophers to gt worked up about, but even more artificial. What happens if the moral calculus is hard? What if it is one child on each line? What if it is a girl on one track, a boy on the other? What if one is rich and one poor? What if one is black and one is white? what if the moral calculus the machine would need to make is ambiguous? Arguable? For surely those cases will greatly outnumber the one where there is one child pitted against six.
{{drop|T|he trolley problem}} is ''too'' cute to be a useful [[nomological machine]] in this context, even for philosophers. By pitting dramatically unequal moral outcomes against each other — ''six'' deaths here, ''one'' there — it is easy for philosophers to get worked up, but exaggerates the already artificial clarity of the dilemma. This is a truly impossible scenario: the ''ideal'' [[negative Lindy effect]]. Tough ethical choices do not manifest as arithmetic. Moral calculus is ''hard''. 
 
So, let’s rework the dilemma: what if the alternatives were broadly comparable: what if there were ''one'' child on each track? You could save ''this'' one, at the expense of ''that'' one? What if the alternatives weren’t comparable ''at all''? What if one were a girl, the other a boy? What if one were rich, one poor? What if one were from a marginalised community? What if ''both'' were, from ''different'' marginalised communities? How would we configure that into an algorithm to be operated at a moment’s notice? What if the required moral calculus were genuinely ''ambiguous''?
 
For, surely these cases would greatly outnumber those where a neat utilitarian computation put the moral outcome beyond doubt.
 
You might say we can draw useful metaphors from the trolley problem — it is a useful tool for exploring moral intuitions about action versus inaction, and ''intended'' versus ''foreseen'' consequences. Sure. But there are better ways of doing that, that would resonate in real-world scenarios, and without absurd mechanical artefacts to distract from the core ethical question.
 
 
{{nld}}
{{nld}}

Latest revision as of 11:46, 13 November 2024

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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

—Voltaire

A runaway trolley is hurtling down a track toward five workers who will certainly be killed if it continues on its course. You are standing next to a point switch. You can divert the trolley onto a side track, saving the five workers, but only at the certain cost of a sixth, who is working on the spur line. Should you pull the switch to divert the trolley, proactively saving five lives, at the certain cost of one?

Philosophy loves condundrums like the trolley problem. Philippa Foot invented it in the 1960s,[1] as a thought experiment to explore the difference in moral qualities between commission and omission. We might, Foot thought, consider it morally permissible to divert the trolley away from the workers, as the death is a foreseeable but unwanted consequence of the action, but not to push someone onto the tracks to stop the trolley even though the outcome would be the same.

This is a narrow point, drawn to illustrate a shortcoming in Roman Catholic moral orthodoxy. It has long since been lost on denizens who now trot the problem out when holding forth on real, not metaphorical, runaway trolleys: driverless cars.

What if a child runs out in front of an autonomous vehicle? What if the vehicle can avoid the child, but only at the cost of causing some other damage or injury? How should it be programmed? Where all outcomes are unconscionable, how can the vehicle operator avoid moral culpability?

Here, the trolley problem presents as a live moral dilemma in need of solution. We are asked to choose, in the abstract and without time pressure, between unconscionable outcome A and unconscionable outcome B. We can see at once this is an emotive but essentially sterile question. There’s no good answer. A story in which someone necessarily dies holds no moral lesson other than don’t do that thing.

Is this a problem in need of solving? Or, in its current context, just philosophical trolling?

Parallel worlds of science and philosophy

Scientists live in this simple, stable world filled to the brim with countless, benign little “nomological machines” they have designed, by which everything reliably works. They can predict the period of a swinging object with the pendulum equation, t = 2π√(l/g). They know the pressure and volume of a quantity of gas thanks to Boyle’s law. They can explain the accelerating expansion of the universe with dark matter, dark energy and an arbitrary cosmological constant. [I don’t think this last one is a great example — Ed] In the scientists’s world, everything runs like clockwork.

Philosophers inhabit, more or less, a dark inversion of the scientists’ world. Theirs is, instead, a universe of insoluble conundrum. They also fill their space with ingenious devices, only malicious ones: philosophical contraptions invented specifically to bugger everything up. In the philosophers’ world, nothing goes according to plan.

For each scientific axiom, whirring happily away in its intricate cage, reliably plotting out the forward progress of the world, the philosophers have their obstreperous counterpoints: here, a brain in a vat, there, a Chinese room, over yonder, a parallel universe — designed to throw the whole edifice into confusion. The ideal world for philosophers is one where nothing works. It affords a licence to sit around arguing why the hell not. This is why they turn up.

Negative-Lindy effect

If a philosophical conundrum ever cropped up in real life, someone practical would have to solve it. This would spoil it: a solved thought experiment is like a drunk bottle: all the fun’s gone out of it: it can’t teach you anything. The best way of resisting solution is to not show up in the first place. To keep out of the way of practical people, and make your home in the minds of academic philosophers. To have lasting value, therefore, a philosophical thought experiment must have some kind of negativeLindy effect”.

The real Lindy effect is a measure of antifragility: things are “road tested” — that have taken a beating at the hands of children, animals and practical people over time and are still working — are less likely to break in the future. If they had a critical weakness, someone would have found it. Untested, new things are more likely to break. We don’t know yet whether they are fragile. If you had to bet which would last longer, the Pyramids of Giza or the Las Vegas Sphere?

The endurance test for philosophical thought experiments is the opposite:

The Negative Lindy Effect: the longer a philosophical thought experiment can survive without presenting in real life to actual people to be tested, the more resilient it will be.

Descartes’ brain in a vat. Excellent. Berkeley’s falling tree in a forest. Brilliant. Fully untestable.

The Trolley Problem seemed like just such an excellent thought experiment: what kind of real-world event could have all the following qualities? A set of determined future outcomes, unfolding over a period that is long enough for the subject to be able to definitively act with moral clarity in a way that is partly but not fully remedial, and yet not quite long enough that the subject can problem-solve, engineer a superior outcome, or just warn anyone, while all the time there is no supervening moral agency from anyone else involved in the scenario?

Just one person can act, and they can only pull a switch, or not pull it.

This is about as artificial as a problem could be.

Artificial certainty

Firstly, we are asked to accept that the subject has perfect, absolute knowledge of the present state and the future outcomes on both tracks — that the train is coming, that it cannot be stopped, that the only possible intervention is her points operation, that death on one spur or the other is inevitable — and that no-one else in the scenario with any moral agency has any knowledge, either of the current status or the future potential.

The subject must be certain that the impacted workers will die. How? Can she see them? If so, why can’t she communicate with them? Why can’t they see her?

Why can’t the workers see anything? Why don’t they get off the tracks?

How about the track operator: can she not see what is happening?

Artificial timeframe

In real life, there are usually many “intervention points” before a crisis. When there aren’t, nor will there be time for abstract moral calculation.

The Trolley Problem artificially compresses moral deliberation into an instant. It must, to close off opportunities for resourcefulness, problem-solving and communication that would spoil its explanatory force.

The subject must pre-solve a moral dilemma in the abstract but without being allowed to request changes to a necessarily inadequate system to prevent the dilemma from arising in the first place.

This is to impose a simple system on a complex problem. The real world would not tolerate such an approach: if we can foresee an adverse outcome — and we can; we are expostulating about it — we are obliged to fix it. This is a minimum standard of system design. Not redesigning the system is the moral failure, not “pulling or failing to pull a lever”.

If we know there is an inherent “trolley problem” in our system design we cannot wait for a literally foreseen calamity to happen before acting to stop it.

Realising there is a risk and running it anyway is the definition of “recklessness”: someone would be guilty of murder in this hypothetical.

Artificial (lack of) social context

The trolley problem also strips away all social and institutional contexts. Why have we designed the system this way? How have we managed to get to this point without anyone foreseeing it?

Trolley problems do not occur in the real world because this social context will intervene to prevent them from arising. We build systems to anticipate problems. We encounter design flaws once and solve them. This is the (good) Lindy effect: Bad designs get junked. Good ones stand the test of time.

Artificial moral agency vacuum

By being made to focus on the switch-puller’s choice, we are forced to overlook real moral failures that led to the situation. The points operator is, by comparison, a random bystander. Despite bearing no responsibility for the situation — she neither designed the track, nor operated it, nor scheduled the workers, nor trained them, nor did she cause the runaway trolley — the poor points operator is expected to be omniscient while everyone else with any part in this incipient tragedy is entirely, and justifiably, inadvertent.

Who designed such an inept system? Who assigned the workers to those dangerous conditions? Who lost control of the trolley? Why weren’t they looking out? Why were there no fail-safes, warning procedures or circuit breakers? Why was the track not designed to prevent accidents like this? Did no one think this could happen?

False paradox

You all know how JC loves a paradox; well, this is a false one. There is no real-world scenario where the trolley problem can play out as a genuine moral conundrum.

Player Responsible for Time of awareness
Before Breakaway After Breakaway
time to react no time to react
System Designer System design safety, foreseeable failure modes Could implement: fail-safes, emergency brakes, worker safety zones, warning systems Could activate: emergency protocols, backup systems Too late
System Operator Worker safety, track access, safe rostering, risk assessment Could ensure: safe work procedures, worker positioning, track access control Maintenance schedule Could initiate: emergency protocols, worker evacuation, system shutdown Too late
Track workers Challenging unsafe conditions, being experts, keeping a lookout for danger. Raise issues. Quit! Evacuate track Pray
Switch Operator Looking after his switch Make sure the switch is working. Call for help Pull switch!

Of all these moral, practical and systems considerations here — there are a lot — the hapless switch operator’s position is the least vexed. If it gets to the point where the only judgment remaining is “whether or not to throw the switch” and no one else is already fully culpable for putting the switch operator in that position, and if, Q.E.D., the switch operator has no time to think about it either, then it necessarily follows that the switch operator will not be blamed for doing nothing.

This will just be one of those things. Shit happens. Accidents happen. The switch operator did not have the time or information to make the moral calculus to intervene, and realistically never would.

The driverless cars

Applying all this to autonomous cars, we see is a false equivalence. Why does the trolley problem not arise, already, for human drivers? Because, unlike TESLAs, humans aren’t perfect rationalising machines. They don’t run on GeForce chips. They cannot flawlessly assimilate, triangulate and arbitrate on terabytes of real-time data within a microsecond — was it a child? A fox? A dog? A balloon? — calculate the brake horsepower, vectors, momentum and a flawless Rawlsian moral outcome and communicate its executive decision to the drive train in time to vouchsafe the appropriate outcome.

If a human driver reacted at all, he may blindly stomp on the anchors without a conscious thought at all. Most likely he will just flatten whatever ran out in front of him and that will be that. Terrible accident. but he can’t be judged because he lacked the faculties to do any better.

And, realistically, a hyper-intelligent autonomous machine still wouldn’t be able to identify the obstacle, identify the alternatives, evaluate the potential damage for each outcome, and assess their relative moral consequences and correctly execute the most morally profitable manoeuvre in the split second available.

So why are we obsessing about autonomous cars? Behold a paradox: data suggest, strongly, that driverless cars are materially safer than human-operated ones. They promise a better set of outcomes than ones we presently tolerate. Yet because of their cognitive limitations, human drivers do not — apparently — suffer from the trolley problem. We are finding a moral conundrum in a fractal segment of spacetime previously inaccessible to moral discourse. By obsessing with hypothetical thought experiments we delay progress on a statistically better outcome.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

Too cute

The trolley problem is too cute to be a useful nomological machine in this context, even for philosophers. By pitting dramatically unequal moral outcomes against each other — six deaths here, one there — it is easy for philosophers to get worked up, but exaggerates the already artificial clarity of the dilemma. This is a truly impossible scenario: the ideal negative Lindy effect. Tough ethical choices do not manifest as arithmetic. Moral calculus is hard.

So, let’s rework the dilemma: what if the alternatives were broadly comparable: what if there were one child on each track? You could save this one, at the expense of that one? What if the alternatives weren’t comparable at all? What if one were a girl, the other a boy? What if one were rich, one poor? What if one were from a marginalised community? What if both were, from different marginalised communities? How would we configure that into an algorithm to be operated at a moment’s notice? What if the required moral calculus were genuinely ambiguous?

For, surely these cases would greatly outnumber those where a neat utilitarian computation put the moral outcome beyond doubt.

You might say we can draw useful metaphors from the trolley problem — it is a useful tool for exploring moral intuitions about action versus inaction, and intended versus foreseen consequences. Sure. But there are better ways of doing that, that would resonate in real-world scenarios, and without absurd mechanical artefacts to distract from the core ethical question.

  1. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect (1967)