[ukmicky]

The moral answer

You pull the lever and send it to the single person not because it’s better to kill one person rather than 5 ,you send it to the single person  because there is more chance of a single person being rescued or getting out of the way in time than  5 people.

What if the case is reversed? It's easier for 5 people to stop the train by cooperation, while it's harder to stop it alone. Let's say it can be done by bending the railway.

But the basic experiment stated that there are only two possible outcomes. No chance is involved which can produce other results.

 

There would never be only 2 possible outcomes. However If there was and i had to decide whether to pull the lever or not which then changes the fate of the single person as it would send the train to him , I would do nothing and allow  fate to continue along the path it was going to run

[alancalverd]

Faith
noun
1.
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
"this restores one's faith in politicians"
2.
strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
"bereaved people who have shown supreme faith"

My point precisely.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The moral answer

You pull the lever and send it to the single person not because it’s better to kill one person rather than 5 ,you send it to the single person  because there is more chance of a single person being rescued or getting out of the way in time than  5 people.

What if the case is reversed? It's easier for 5 people to stop the train by cooperation, while it's harder to stop it alone. Let's say it can be done by bending the railway.

But the basic experiment stated that there are only two possible outcomes. No chance is involved which can produce other results.

 

There would never be only 2 possible outcomes. However If there was and i had to decide whether to pull the lever or not which then changes the fate of the single person as it would send the train to him , I would do nothing and allow  fate to continue along the path it was going to run

We learn from simplified problems. The intention of the thought experiment was to find out how people's moral values affect their decisions.
It's interesting that you think that following fate is higly important. Let's see how far would it go. Would you still do nothing if the one person on the other track is replaced by a bear? or a dog? or a mannequine?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Belief
noun
1.
an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.
"his belief in the value of hard work"

To be explicit, I used the first definition of belief, which is more aligned with its usage in machine learning. 

A Bayesian network (also known as a Bayes network, belief network, or decision network) is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of variables and their conditional dependencies via a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Bayesian networks are ideal for taking an event that occurred and predicting the likelihood that any one of several possible known causes was the contributing factor. For example, a Bayesian network could represent the probabilistic relationships between diseases and symptoms. Given symptoms, the network can be used to compute the probabilities of the presence of various diseases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network
Our beliefs can be true or false. Our confidence to the correctness of our beliefs should be proportional to the evidence supporting them.

[ukmicky]

The moral answer

You pull the lever and send it to the single person not because it’s better to kill one person rather than 5 ,you send it to the single person  because there is more chance of a single person being rescued or getting out of the way in time than  5 people.

What if the case is reversed? It's easier for 5 people to stop the train by cooperation, while it's harder to stop it alone. Let's say it can be done by bending the railway.

But the basic experiment stated that there are only two possible outcomes. No chance is involved which can produce other results.

 

There would never be only 2 possible outcomes. However If there was and i had to decide whether to pull the lever or not which then changes the fate of the single person as it would send the train to him , I would do nothing and allow  fate to continue along the path it was going to run

We learn from simplified problems. The intention of the thought experiment was to find out how people's moral values affect their decisions.
It's interesting that you think that following fate is higly important. Let's see how far would it go. Would you still do nothing if the one person on the other track is replaced by a bear? or a dog? or a mannequine?

Then I would pull the lever, as a bear etc is not a human being and has less worth and they don’t have families that would morn their death to the level of of a person or be financially impacted by the loss.

[alancalverd]

a bear etc is not a human being and has less worth and they don’t have families that would morn their death to the level of of a person or be financially impacted by the loss.

which shows your ignorance of other species, and the utter stupidity and fragility of most humans. Neither of which is a particularly sound foundation for a scientific argument.

[ukmicky]

a bear etc is not a human being and has less worth and they don’t have families that would morn their death to the level of of a person or be financially impacted by the loss.

which shows your ignorance of other species, and the utter stupidity and fragility of most humans. Neither of which is a particularly sound foundation for a scientific argument.

I'm not ignorant of other species I just know what has more worth .

[alancalverd]

To you, maybe. But no other species thinks you are particularly valuable except as food. That's part of the problem with this thread: HY goes on about universal morality applying to all species and machines but almost every species is in deadly competition with some other species so either universal morality has to allow anything to kill and eat anything else, or it is meaningless.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Then I would pull the lever, as a bear etc is not a human being and has less worth and they don’t have families that would morn their death to the level of of a person or be financially impacted by the loss.

Would you still pull the lever if it's a dying old man whose life expectancy is just a few hours? or a few days? or months?
What's the reasoning?

[ukmicky]

Then I would pull the lever, as a bear etc is not a human being and has less worth and they don’t have families that would morn their death to the level of of a person or be financially impacted by the loss.

Would you still pull the lever if it's a dying old man whose life expectancy is just a few hours? or a few days? or months?
What's the reasoning?

No he is a human being and has a right to live even if it’s only hours so I would let fate determine which way the train went.

[alancalverd]

Do you let fate determine everything in your life, or do you look before you cross the road?

[ukmicky]

Do you let fate determine everything in your life, or do you look before you cross the road?

Yes I look before I cross the road but not  all situations require actions and those that don’t are often determined by fate.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

No he is a human being and has a right to live even if it’s only hours so I would let fate determine which way the train went.

What if his life is just a few minutes? or seconds? Is he still worthy enough to sacrifice five other persons?
How do you define human being? What are the boundaries?
Is it determined by genetic? How much genetic difference is tolerated to include a specimen into human category?
Do you know that most people alive today carry some non-human DNA?
Emergency responders faced real life situations similar to the thought experiment, like in accidents involving mass transportation. They must optimize limited resources to save people who need them, and avoid wasting resources trying to save victims who have no chance to survive due to the type, location, and magnitude of the injuries, even when they were still alive.

[alancalverd]

I look before I cross the road but not  all situations require actions and those that don’t are often determined by fate.

Can  you draw a line between "leaving it to fate" and criminal negligence, in the particular case in question?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The trolley problem is basically a decision making process with two options. Each sides have their own costs and benefits.
On one side the cost is lost of one human life, and additional cost of switching the direction of the train. On the other side, the cost is lost of one human life, and additional cost of several other human lives which supposedly compensate for the cost of switching.

[alancalverd]

Do you know that most people alive today carry some non-human DNA?

Only the unacknowledged offspring of certain Conservative politicians.

[alancalverd]

Emergency responders faced real life situations similar to the thought experiment, like in accidents involving mass transportation. They must optimize limited resources to save people who need them, and avoid wasting resources trying to save victims who have no chance to survive due to the type, location, and magnitude of the injuries, even when they were still alive.

It's called triage. Group A will survive if we do nothing, group B will not recover whatever we do, group C will survive if we treat them . So we treat group C. You can refine it in practice by offering cups of tea to A and B, some of whom may then slip into C.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The trolley problem is basically a decision making process with two options. Each sides have their own costs and benefits.
On one side the cost is lost of one human life, and additional cost of switching the direction of the train. On the other side, the cost is lost of one human life, and additional cost of several other human lives which supposedly compensate for the cost of switching.

In the original thought experiment, the additional cost to compensate the switching cost is four other human lives in the track traversed by the train if it's not switched. Explicit cost of the switching is supposedly negligible, depicted by pulling a lever or pushing a switch button. So, how can this be compared to sacrificing additional 4 human lives? There must be implicit assumptions embedded to the cost of switching.

A possible assumption is fear of retaliation by relatives of the person sacrificed by the switching. Another possibility is fear of backlash from the society, which can take various forms. That's why the survey can produce different results when done in different types of societies, and can be affected by mental states of the participants.

As I mentioned in my older post, virtually noone would do the switch if there is only one person on each track (no compensation for the cost of switching). Some may start to consider switching when there are 2 persons in the original track (cost of switching is compensated by 1 additional human life). More people will switch when the compensation is higher number of human lives. I think I can safely assume that most people will switch the track if the cost of switching is compensated by a million human lives.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Do you know that most people alive today carry some non-human DNA?

Only the unacknowledged offspring of certain Conservative politicians.

Melanesians were found to have a mysterious third archaic Homo species along with their Denisovan (3–4%) and Neanderthal (2%) ancestors in a genetic admixture with their otherwise modern Homo sapiens sapiens genomes.[15] Their most common Y-chromosome haplogroup is M-P256.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesia#Genetic_studies

The first Neanderthal genome sequence was published in 2010, and strongly indicated interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans.[75][348][349][350] The genomes of all non-sub-Saharan populations contain Neanderthal DNA.[75][77][351][352] Various estimates exist for the proportion: 1–4% in modern Eurasians,[75] 3.4–7.9%,[353] One study, using the IBDmix method, concluded that the all genomes of modern people from the 1000 genomes project, including Africans, had Neanderthal genes (with the amount of Neanderthal DNA in Asians being 55 megabases (Mb) or 1.8%, in Europeans - 51 MB or about 1.7%,[354] and in Africans about 17 MB or 0.3% of their genome,[355] while previous findings have found that Africans have significantly less megabase - in the previous lakh from 0.026 Mb for the people ishan to 0.5 Mb for the peoples Luhya). Africans share 7.2% of their Neanderthal admixture exclusively with Europeans, significantly higher than the 2% that Africans share exclusively with East Asians. 1.8–2.4% in modern Europeans and 2.3–2.6% in modern East Asians.[356] However, some scientists, such as geneticist David Reich, dispute the study's conclusions suggesting widespread Neanderthal admixture in sub-Saharan Africans.[357] Pre-agricultural Europeans appear to have had similar percentages to modern East Asians, and the numbers may have decreased in the former due to dilution with a group of people which had split off before Neanderthal introgression.[87] Such low percentages indicate infrequent interbreeding.[358] However, it is possible interbreeding was more common with a different population of modern humans which did not contribute to the present day gene pool.[87] Of the inherited Neanderthal genome, 25% in modern Europeans and 32% in modern East Asians may be related to viral immunity.[359] In all, approximately 20% of the Neanderthal genome appears to have survived in the modern human gene pool.[82]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Interbreeding_with_modern_humans

Reconstruction of the upper Palaeolithic human Oase 2 with around 7.3% Neanderthal DNA (from an ancestor 4–6 generations back)

[alancalverd]

I would class all members of the genus Homo as human. Unlike Sus, copulation with which is a step on the fast track to high Tory office.