My reading of this was that they were suicidal. If people want to kill themselves, that's not for me to decide if that's right, or wrong. But if i can save one person from misfortune, atleast i was ablee to do that.
>70% would rather send a trolley into the future to kill 5 people 100 years from now, instead of 5 people now.
Would you rather have $5 now, or $5 in the future? Humans are compounding, i'd rather pay you in the future when there is more abundance.
I had the same thought, but this isn't necessarily true.
With money, it's true by design. Interest rates, inflation and money expansion are core components of the economy.
However, with humans it all depends on the fertility rate, and it's currently dropping. So in this scenario, there's a lot we don't know about the future.
I sent the trolley into the future because, all else being equal, at least it gives us 100 years to plan for the event.
One thing has been constant through history, population growth. I have seen no evidence that this is slowing, only that 'Developed nations' are having less kids. People seem to forget that develop nations don't really represent 'the world' as a whole. Southeast asia, India, rural parts of China, South America do not seem to have this problem and they represent that majority of the world as much as the west would like to hide that fact.
Also, we've already proved that artificial womb technology is theoretically possible... it's only a matter of a few generations until thats going to be abused.
We have an unbelievable amount of resources in our galaxy alone. I don't see anything slowing down in the near future.
RIGHT?!?
I mean, who know's the potential reprecussions that portal might hold for us if we send that trolley through. Sure, 5 people might be saved today; but millions could be saved instead in 100 years when that portal isn't reopening to whoop our ass for killing 5.
I am personally interrogating my response to this:
"Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people who tied themselves to the track. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, killing 1 person who accidentally tripped onto the track instead. What do you do?"
I save the 5 over the 1. Only 15% agree with me. Why?
This is the first Absurd Trolley Problem (I think) that explained WHY a person was tied to the track.
I think the value of this hypothetical is in establishing the value of cultural relativism versus Kantian ethics.
In that framing, I'm really surprised that, on Level 27, 70% would rather send a trolley into the future to kill 5 people 100 years from now, instead of 5 people now. In almost 11K votes, this seems significant.
My view is that this provides evidence for the Bentham "hedonic calculus". (And I'm sure there are better scholars of Kant and Bentham than I that can argue for or against this.)
Here's a "political" example: Do you want to deal with problems now, or defer? 70% will defer. (I think this checks out, and is truly hedonic.)
So, I think the data, and the utilitarian approach shows: don't expect any of our societal problems (politically agnostic) to be solved any time soon.