[alancalverd]

Apropos the trolley problem, it is clearly invented by a philosopher with no understanding of reality. If you half-switch the points, or switch it when the front wheels have passed, the trolley will derail without hitting anyone.

[ukmicky]

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?

in a real world example I would certainly perform an action which would hopefully  preserve life rather than leave something to fate but in  the case in question as is a kind of dumb question it’s impossible to find a position as to where the line should be drawn

[alancalverd]

A civil servant decided to spend a holiday working on a farm. On the first day the farmer decided to give him a simple indoor job.  They went to a barn containing a hundred tons of apples. The farmer said "We need to sort these. The big ones go to market and we crush the small ones for cider and pig food. We sort them by hand to avoid bruising the market apples. Just make two new heaps, please."

At the end of the day the farmer opened the barn and found the civil servant staring intently at an apple in his hand. He said "I picked up two apples and put the larger one on the left and the smaller one on the right. Now would you call this a big apple or a small apple?" 

It's good to meet a fellow civil servant, but not in a crisis.

[charles1948]

When two civil servants pass in the street, they smile knowingly at each other.

[alancalverd]

It's not just a secret between us, either.

As I got into a  Dublin taxi the driver said "So you're a civil servant from London, then." I asked him how he knew. He said "You hailed the taxi like you were in charge of a flight deck."

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Apropos the trolley problem, it is clearly invented by a philosopher with no understanding of reality. If you half-switch the points, or switch it when the front wheels have passed, the trolley will derail without hitting anyone.

Let's not belittle someone else's professions. Engineers who built the tracks and train most likely had built safety precautions to prevent those kind of things. For example, the switch is designed not to react untill it's fully switched, and it doesn't react when a train is already in the mid of crossing the intersection.
In introductory physics, students learn about pulley problem. Some idealizations are common:
- the ceiling and the strings have infinite strength.
- the strings and the pulley have 0 mass and 0 elasticity.
- no friction by air nor contact between string and pulley
- gravitational acceleration is unaffected by object's position, either in magnitude or direction.



It doesn't necessarily mean that the teachers don't understand real world physics. They just don't want their students to be distracted from the core issue they want to discuss. The idealized situations are a middle road between giving a sense of real world practicality and pure math equations detached from reality.

So does it seems for the trolley problem. It was meant to find out what people think as morally valuable things by balancing both sides of a weighing balance depicted by two rail tracks. The philosophers don't want us to be distracted by remotely related details.

[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.

Is it still worthy to sacrifice 5 lives to save the one with a few seconds left to live, just to follow you principle? Even if that means you end up with six dead bodies when the train stops?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Here is another plot twist I just thought of. You have inadvertently switched the track when you learn about the situation, so the train is heading toward one person. Will you switch it back to its original track, which will kill 5 people, instead of letting your mistake inadvertently kill 1?
In this scenario, both decisions involve you action. Hence there is no excuse of being a passive bystander.

[alancalverd]

Let's not belittle someone else's professions.

I distinguish between professionals and parasites.

Engineers who built the tracks and train most likely had built safety precautions to prevent those kind of things. For example, the switch is designed not to react untill it's fully switched, and it doesn't react when a train is already in the mid of crossing the intersection.

Have you ever travelled by train? We are talking about large mechanical structures driven mostly by electric motors with worm gears, pneumatics (fairly quick but not instantaneous)  or, in the case of a goods yard where you are likely to encounter a loose driverless trolley, simple manual levers and pushrods.  The cool safety feature is usually a brake on the trolley which can only be released by a person standing on it or by being coupled to the train vacuum system. So my suggestion is far more realistic than any notion of brakeless trolleys and instantaneous switches.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I distinguish between professionals and parasites.

How can a philosopher who teach about trolley problem becomes a parasite?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Have you ever travelled by train?

How does it make a difference?
How many people traveled in a car, bus, train, without knowing how they work.
On the other hand, designers of Mars landers never travel to Mars.

[ukmicky]

Here the math shows that you should pull the lever.

However even if you were correct and the Math  (or should that be Maths ,mathematics or even arithmetic )  shows that you should pull the lever . Pulling the lever would of course cause the death of an innocent party  which would be either murder or manslaughter ,so in reality no one except  an idiot would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win .

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

so in reality no one except  would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win

Except who?
Real life experiment in the mindfield video shows that some people are really willing and capable of pulling the lever.
Fate is determined after the fact. So, it's not surprising that it always win. It's a circular logic.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

However even if you were correct and the Math  (or should that be Maths ,mathematics or even arithmetic )  shows that you should pull the lever . Pulling the lever would of course cause the death of an innocent party  which would be either murder or manslaughter ,so in reality no one except  would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win

How do you answer my alternative case? Will you switch back the lever to cancel your inadvertent action?

Here is another plot twist I just thought of. You have inadvertently switched the track when you learn about the situation, so the train is heading toward one person. Will you switch it back to its original track, which will kill 5 people, instead of letting your mistake inadvertently kill 1?
In this scenario, both decisions involve you action. Hence there is no excuse of being a passive bystander.

[ukmicky]

so in reality no one except  would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win

Except who?
Real life experiment in the mindfield video shows that some people are really willing and capable of pulling the lever.
Fate is determined after the fact. So, it's not surprising that it always win. It's a circular logic.

An idiot

[alancalverd]

I distinguish between professionals and parasites.

How can a philosopher who teach about trolley problem becomes a parasite?

A philosopher is a parasite. All he has done so far is to waste your time.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

so in reality no one except  would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win

Except who?
Real life experiment in the mindfield video shows that some people are really willing and capable of pulling the lever.
Fate is determined after the fact. So, it's not surprising that it always win. It's a circular logic.

An idiot

You're redefining word. Most people in many surveys said they would pull the lever to save 5 people and sacrifice 1. Many of the surveys participants are college students, which must have passed some preliminary cognitive tests.
You can accuse others who disagree with you of being idiot. But if the evidences are against you, you are putting your own credential in jeopardy.

[ukmicky]

so in reality no one except  would pull the lever and as I said previously fate would win

Except who?
Real life experiment in the mindfield video shows that some people are really willing and capable of pulling the lever.
Fate is determined after the fact. So, it's not surprising that it always win. It's a circular logic.

An idiot

You're redefining word. Most people in many surveys said they would pull the lever to save 5 people and sacrifice 1. Many of the surveys participants are college students, which must have passed some preliminary cognitive tests.
You can accuse others who disagree with you of being idiot. But if the evidences are against you, you are putting your own credential in jeopardy.

No I just live in the real world

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

No I just live in the real world

OK. For now I believe that you are not a chatbot.
But your judgement you've made which contradicts available evidence reduces your credibility to make a judgement.
Why don't you try to answer the alternative plots of the trolley problem presented here?
- Will you still refuse to pull the lever if you know that the person on second track has only a few seconds to live?
- Will you still refuse to pull the lever if letting the train to pass through first track would kill more people? say a hundred? a thousand? a million?
- Will you switch back to the original track after you already pulled the lever?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Here is another plot twist I just thought of. You have inadvertently switched the track when you learn about the situation, so the train is heading toward one person. Will you switch it back to its original track, which will kill 5 people, instead of letting your mistake inadvertently kill 1?
In this scenario, both decisions involve you action. Hence there is no excuse of being a passive bystander.

Another variation of the plot twist. You didn't pull the lever inadvertently. You pulled it because you weren't aware of the one person on the second track.
When you become aware of that person, will you switch back to the original track, which will eventually kill 5 people?