yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Philosophy's Biggest Questions


3m read
·Nov 4, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

You've probably heard of the trolley problem, especially if you're at all interested in philosophy or ethics. Lately, it's been a subject of discussion when discussing autonomous cars and was referenced explicitly in the show "The Good Place." Some people think it's a fun moral thought experiment to discuss in a group; others feel it's a good ethical workout to prepare for real-world ethical dilemmas.

But what if the trolley problem has a problem of its own? Well, before diving into the problem with the trolley problem, we've got one crucial thing to do: drive the trolley.

The trolley problem goes like this: you're driving a trolley along a track when all of a sudden the brakes just stop working. If you stay on the track in front of you, you'll run over a group of five people standing on the track. But you have the option of pulling a switch and directing the trolley onto another track with just a single person standing on the track. You have to choose between killing five people or one person. What is the morally correct thing to do? Do you flip the switch to save five people and kill one, or do you leave the switch alone, kill five, and leave one unharmed?

The trolley problem is a widely used moral thought experiment, especially in beginner philosophy classes. The problem is often used to illustrate two branches of ethics: consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialists focus on the consequences of an action, while deontologists emphasize a sense of moral duty.

Utilitarianism is a prime example of consequentialism. Philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham considered the moral value of an action based on the outcome and whether it contributed to the greater good. If you were to consider the trolley problem from the consequentialist perspective, you'd quickly pull that switch to take just one life instead of the group of five. When more people get to live, that benefits the greater good.

On the other hand, a manual "Kidney" ethics challenges you to universalize a principle or maxim to see if it works regardless of circumstance. His classic example is lying: can you imagine universalized lying as a maxim? If everyone lied all the time, you couldn't trust anything anyone said. Kant would suggest that lying is therefore immoral. From a deontological perspective, the trolley problem is more challenging.

Could you universalize your principle of killing someone to save others? Imagine one person had five kidneys that could save the lives of five people. However, the kidney owner would have to be killed against their will to attain the organs. Killing the kidney owner instinctually feels wrong compared to flipping the switch in the trolley problem. It doesn't seem like you could universalize this principle of killing one to save five others.

The trolley problem is an excellent way to learn about these two systems of ethics, but does the thought experiment actually help with moral decisions? Do any imagined circumstances help with real-world moral decisions? The trolley problem allows us to consider the interaction between ethics, psychology, and logic.

To fully appreciate thought experiments like this, you need to have a good understanding of concepts like math, probability, and science. I know these can be really difficult and expensive to learn if you take the traditional approach, but you don't have to. Thanks to Brilliant.org, the sponsor of today's episode, Brilliant is a platform that allows you to learn by doing, with thousands of interactive lessons in math, data analysis, programming, and AI.

I love Brilliant and have been using it for years because of how easy it is to start learning. Thanks to their amazing mobile app and short, fun lessons, you can learn anywhere and in any short amount of time you have. Whether you're diving into a new topic or just doing a quick practice lesson, you can level up in just a few minutes right there on your phone.

This is what I spent time doing when I would have otherwise been doom scrolling on TikTok. And it's not just easy to use; Brilliant, as a learning platform, is also designed to be uniquely effective. Their first principles approach helps you build...

More Articles

View All
The Child Mind Institute on supporting children during Covid-19 | Homeroom with Sal
Hi everyone, welcome to the daily homeroom! Uh, for those of you all who aren’t familiar with what this is or might just be showing up off of Facebook or YouTube, uh, this is Khan Academy’s way of making sure that we all stay connected during school clos…
Her Parents Made the Ultimate Sacrifice for Democracy—She Continues the Fight | Short Film Showcase
[Music] In 1983 my father was elected president of [Applause] Nigeria. He came with a platform that said hope; farewell to poverty. [Applause] We will appoint several women, not just one, not just two, not just three, but several women into the governmen…
YC Fireside: Surbhi Sarna + Reshma Shetty and Jason Kelly - Founders of Ginkgo Bioworks
Hi, welcome Reshma and Jason and everybody on the call. Hi, my gosh, I am so excited to chat with the two of you, pioneers in the field of synthetic biology. So to kick us off, the audience today is going to be a mix of people with a tech background and …
A day in my life.
This is a day in the life of a private jet broker. I get into the office at six a.m., three hours before my team. I like getting in early to catch up on work and establish my plan of action for the rest of the day. I then call my clients in Asia, do email…
Bill Belichick & Ray Dalio on Having Great Relationships: Part 1
Now let’s talk about partnership. Now when you’re dealing in an organization, you have the owner, you have the players. Okay, now there’s interpersonal relations. How do you deal with those interpersonal relations? Like probably, you know the question exa…
Subtracting with place value blocks (regrouping)
What we want to do in this video is figure out what 438 minus 272 is. To help us think about that, we have these place value blocks right over here. You can see 438: we have four hundreds (100, 200, 300, 400), we have three tens (one, two, three), and th…