The Revenant Problem

Thommo · **#41** by **Thommo** » Jan 03, 2018 7:40 am

I came across this the other day, which is a bit of fun for those who like trolley problems:

http://moralmachine.mit.edu/

It's a website designed to quiz people about how they think driverless cars should behave in crash scenarios that are essentially trolley problems.

GrahamH · **#42** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 8:42 am

Rumraket wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Rumraket wrote:
Or how about a reverse trolley problem with greater stakes?

Fair pont. I think (almost?) everyone has some threshold where the utilitarian logic overwhealms any inhibition on killing people.
200 kids to one adult would probably do it for me.

I'd avoid the "tried to the tracks" bit though and keep to just being unfortunate bystander in the wrong plance at the wrong time.

I agree, and I would not presume to have figured out the one true correct principle of rational ethics. I don't believe there is such a thing. I think we are in large part ruled mostly by intuition here. I think your analogue of the trolley problem, with saving five people by murdering a person for their organs, brings that out well. I can't think of something that makes it rationally different from the trolley problem, it just feels different. There's something about the whole idea that you sort of have to "plan" and act out five murders, at least.

Dutton's version avoids the planning by making the agent the transplant surgeon and the unwitting donor someone who by chance comes to the surgeon's clinic for tests. Then a there the surgeon finds he has a viable donor that could save five lives and that he could kill without suspicion.

So it can be to kill one, without premeditation to save five, just like the original.

A couple of emotive differences I can see are that being harvested like a commodity is more disturbing than an "accident" and that the surgeon profits from it over and above the lives that are saved. The utilitarian logic is just the same.

GrahamH · **#43** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 9:00 am

Thommo wrote:I came across this the other day, which is a bit of fun for those who like trolley problems:

http://moralmachine.mit.edu/

It's a website designed to quiz people about how they think driverless cars should behave in crash scenarios that are essentially trolley problems.

Thanks for that.
I'm uneasy with the idea of last second swerving. The idea is not to think about practicalities, but sudden swerves hugely complicate the situation. If anyone has a chance to take avoiding action themselves the AI should favour predictable control over wild manoeuvres.

The premise that vehicle AI will make life and death decisions by estimating the relative value of people in it's path seems orders of magnitude more fanciful that the trolley problem. I think I would rather have egalitarian AI.

TopCat · **#44** by **TopCat** » Jan 03, 2018 9:48 am

GrahamH will you please fix the quotes in your earlier reply to me?

GrahamH · **#45** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 10:06 am

TopCat wrote:GrahamH will you please fix the quotes in your earlier reply to me?

I think I fixed it.

TopCat · **#46** by **TopCat** » Jan 03, 2018 10:17 am

GrahamH wrote:
TopCat wrote:GrahamH will you please fix the quotes in your earlier reply to me?

I think I fixed it.

Thank you.

I've upgraded you from 'potential candidate for not saving' to 'definitely would save, all other things being equal' if I find you tied to the tracks someday.

Thommo · **#47** by **Thommo** » Jan 03, 2018 10:37 am

GrahamH wrote:Thanks for that.
I'm uneasy with the idea of last second swerving. The idea is not to think about practicalities, but sudden swerves hugely complicate the situation. If anyone has a chance to take avoiding action themselves the AI should favour predictable control over wild manoeuvres.

The premise that vehicle AI will make life and death decisions by estimating the relative value of people in it's path seems orders of magnitude more fanciful that the trolley problem. I think I would rather have egalitarian AI.

Yeah, I agree with all of that. Any AI so sophisticated it can identify every person in its path and assign a value to them by their career as a doctor or criminal can probably identify a fault with the brakes as well as attempt to use the emergency brake.

From a systems point of view you'd definitely think predictability has to be a key constraint in emergency manoeuvres.

GrahamH · **#48** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 11:06 am

Thommo wrote: Any AI so sophisticated it can identify every person in its path and assign a value to them by their career as a doctor or criminal can probably identify a fault with the brakes as well as attempt to use the emergency brake.

Agreed. It could also slow down for pedestrians crossings and wherever pedestrians are in close proximity to traffic.

I really don't like the idea that someone might get killed just because a "VIP" happens to be at risk on the other side of the road.

It sounds like a plot for a Black Mirror episode.

Thommo · **#49** by **Thommo** » Jan 03, 2018 11:33 am

Like all good sci fi concepts it's been done before, to at least some extent.

I can't recall the name of the short story right now, but Isaac Asimov wrote about a situation where a programmer tasked a robot with reasoning about the worth of humans in rescue situations, from fires or something like that I think, and the end of the story has the robot reasoning about what a human really is and concluding that robots could be considered humans too, leading to a seeming violation (as in so many of his stories) of the three laws of robotics.

On a tangentially related note there's an excellent episode of the excellent sitcom "The Good Place" that I watched over Christmas about the Trolley problem. It's a pretty wonderful send up.

ETA: It might be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/._._._Tha ... ful_of_Him

TopCat · **#50** by **TopCat** » Jan 03, 2018 2:17 pm

GrahamH wrote:
TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:I know people who do say it's the numbers that count. They say that of course they would hit the switch to kill one if it would save 5.

That's a different scenario. In that one all the people are random strangers. On the basis that allowing people to die through inaction is bad, hitting the switch to allow one to die to save five is an obviously ethical thing to do. The alternative - doing nothing - is just dodging responsibility, and seems completely unethical to me.

That is an argument I've heard and it is logical, but I dispute that it is obviously ethical. Indeed the whole basis of the trolley problem is that there are profound disagreements about what would be ethical and why.

I said:

On the basis that allowing people to die through inaction is bad, hitting the switch to allow one to die to save five is an obviously ethical thing to do.

If allowing people to die through inaction is bad (ie unethical), surely it follows that hitting the switch is ethical in this case.

Which of these are you disputing? a) that allowing people to die through inaction is unethical (assuming, obviously that you have the power not to) b) that 'obviously ethical' follows from my premise, or c) something else?

TopCat wrote:But I'm trying to dig into the less obvious one a little.

It's academic, of course, and I really can't say what I'd actually do if I was faced with the circumstances. But it seems to me that although I've always thought of myself as an ethical person, I would choose to allow the death of quite a number of people to save people dear to me in less than a heartbeat.

I hope I'm not alone in finding that attitude disturbing. Of course history has plenty of cases where people killed other people for what they thought was a greater good in their own view.

At risk of falling foul of Godwin's law, how far are you intending to generalise here? I care far more about people close to me than I care about random strangers. That doesn't mean that I'm a potential mass murderer.

TopCat wrote:That said, killing someone to harvest their organs is more problematical. Instinctively I recoil at this, certainly because it's gory and that skews things. But I don't think the situation is the same.

That's a dodge. Please explain why it's not equivalent. Kill one who wouldotherwise have lived to save many who wouldotherwise have died. It looks the same to me.

It's not a dodge, as I explained in the very next sentence.... vvv

TopCat wrote:A better analogy would be this: suppose I knew that someone's organs were suitable, and they would go to my sick loved one, and they were lying on one branch of the tracks, and another random stranger were on the other branch, and I had the switch, would I choose which one died?

That is just personalising it to emphasise a selfish bias. It still shows a complete lack of empathy for strangers. It's the sort of thinking typical of sociopaths.

Just trying to analyse myself a little. Most of the time, I don't have much empathy for strangers. As someone said, people are dying all the time. Most of the time I don't care at all.

As soon as there's a connection of some kind, though, it changes. If there's a light plane crash, for instance, I always feel really empathic as that could be me. All the sadness and feeling for the bereaved, and for the waste of a life then come flooding in. Or there has to be something utterly monstrous about the event, such as the Asian Tsunami, or the Charlie Hebdo murders, to cite just a couple of things (of many) that did upset me.

Also, I'm not saying I wouldn't feel bad flicking the switch, whatever the outcome was. I'm quite sure I'd feel terrible, as by acting I would have become connected to the people. But not as terrible as if I'd done nothing.

Coming back to my earlier point, I still think that preferring kin (and close friends) over non-kin when making these decisions is an important part of the equation.

GrahamH · **#51** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 2:59 pm

TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:I know people who do say it's the numbers that count. They say that of course they would hit the switch to kill one if it would save 5.

That's a different scenario. In that one all the people are random strangers. On the basis that allowing people to die through inaction is bad, hitting the switch to allow one to die to save five is an obviously ethical thing to do. The alternative - doing nothing - is just dodging responsibility, and seems completely unethical to me.

That is an argument I've heard and it is logical, but I dispute that it is obviously ethical. Indeed the whole basis of the trolley problem is that there are profound disagreements about what would be ethical and why.

I said:

On the basis that allowing people to die through inaction is bad, hitting the switch to allow one to die to save five is an obviously ethical thing to do.

If allowing people to die through inaction is bad (ie unethical), surely it follows that hitting the switch is ethical in this case.

Which of these are you disputing? a) that allowing people to die through inaction is unethical (assuming, obviously that you have the power not to) b) that 'obviously ethical' follows from my premise, or c) something else?

Acting in ways that result in people dying is generally not ethical. So yes, of course, saving lives is ethical in itself, but it conflicts with unethical killing in the scenario. It is debateable what weights to attribute to the two, hence there is nothing obvious about it. Killing one person is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" and since doing that is your only option to save five lives by the that one act that is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" either.

You could compare it to "innocent until proven guilty". You might say it's ethical to lock up criminals, but you might also think it's unethical to lock up innocent people. You have to choose level of proof that reaches some balance of ethical and unethical incarceration. Do you prefer to let a few guilty people go rather than lock up any innocent people? Or do you prefer to sacrifice some innocents to get most of the guilty ones? Is one injustice more significant than the other?

TopCat · **#52** by **TopCat** » Jan 03, 2018 3:22 pm

GrahamH wrote:Acting in ways that result in people dying is generally not ethical. So yes, of course, saving lives is ethical in itself, but it conflicts with unethical killing in the scenario. It is debateable what weights to attribute to the two, hence there is nothing obvious about it. Killing one person is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" and since doing that is your only option to save five lives by the that one act that is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" either.

Ok, then let me try it this way.

I would contend the following:

1. Given the power to do something about it, and all other things being equal, it is less unethical to allow one person to die than five.

2. In the absence of a third choice, it is ethical to do the less unethical of two things.

Do you disagree with this?

ETA... Please don't go on about the organ harvesting situation. In that one, all other things aren't equal, and there are other choices. It's not the same, it's far more complicated, and we haven't finished the simple case yet.

GrahamH · **#53** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 3:43 pm

TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:Acting in ways that result in people dying is generally not ethical. So yes, of course, saving lives is ethical in itself, but it conflicts with unethical killing in the scenario. It is debateable what weights to attribute to the two, hence there is nothing obvious about it. Killing one person is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" and since doing that is your only option to save five lives by the that one act that is not "an obviously ethical thing to do" either.

Ok, then let me try it this way.

I would contend the following:

1. Given the power to do something about it, and all other things being equal, it is less unethical to allow one person to die than five.

2. In the absence of a third choice, it is ethical to do the less unethical of two things.

Do you disagree with this?

ETA... Please don't go on about the organ harvesting situation. In that one, all other things aren't equal, and there are other choices. It's not the same, it's far more complicated, and we haven't finished the simple case yet.

I'd still like you to identify how the transplant scenario differs.

My view is that it is more significant to take a life than to save a life. It is more unethical to imprison an innocent person than to allow a guilty person to go free. It is wrong to kill an innocent person to save someone else, or even five other people.
The scenario requires that you either take one life by your deliberate act or you stand by an allow five to meet their fate.
I prefer to not deliberately take a life in that situation. That seems more ethical to me. It's not just a numbers game.

TopCat · **#54** by **TopCat** » Jan 03, 2018 6:24 pm

GrahamH wrote:My view is that it is more significant to take a life than to save a life. It is more unethical to imprison an innocent person than to allow a guilty person to go free. It is wrong to kill an innocent person to save someone else, or even five other people.
The scenario requires that you either take one life by your deliberate act or you stand by and allow five to meet their fate.
I prefer to not deliberately take a life in that situation. That seems more ethical to me. It's not just a numbers game.

You say that it's not a numbers game.

At all? Really?

How much more unethical is it to imprison an innocent person than let a guilty one go free?

If you can't quantify it at all, then surely you'd have to abolish all prisons, lest our imperfect judicial system imprisons one innocent.

GrahamH · **#55** by **GrahamH** » Jan 03, 2018 8:44 pm

TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:My view is that it is more significant to take a life than to save a life. It is more unethical to imprison an innocent person than to allow a guilty person to go free. It is wrong to kill an innocent person to save someone else, or even five other people.
The scenario requires that you either take one life by your deliberate act or you stand by and allow five to meet their fate.
I prefer to not deliberately take a life in that situation. That seems more ethical to me. It's not just a numbers game.

You say that it's not a numbers game.

At all? Really?

How much more unethical is it to imprison an innocent person than let a guilty one go free?

If you can't quantify it at all, then surely you'd have to abolish all prisons, lest our imperfect judicial system imprisons one innocent.

It's not just a numbers game.

TopCat · **#56** by **TopCat** » Jan 04, 2018 10:55 am

GrahamH wrote:It's not just a numbers game.

Ah, apologies!

I misinterpreted the 'just' as 'merely', I didn't realise that you meant that it is a numbers game, as well as being something else.

Ok, if you don't like the 1:5 ratio, what would tip the balance?

20?

Four random strangers, plus a loved one?

GrahamH · **#57** by **GrahamH** » Jan 04, 2018 11:23 am

TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:It's not just a numbers game.

Ah, apologies!

I misinterpreted the 'just' as 'merely', I didn't realise that you meant that it is a numbers game, as well as being something else.

Ok, if you don't like the 1:5 ratio, what would tip the balance?

20?

Four random strangers, plus a loved one?

Having noted that I don't accept that it is just a numbers game why do you try to reduce it to one?
There is no ratio I would be comfortable with. There will be some number I'd compromise over but I don't know what it would be.
I don't believe I would resort to murder of innocent people to save a loved one. I wouldn't push a fat guy into the path of a train. It's a cold sick thing to do.

DavidMcC · **#58** by **DavidMcC** » Jan 04, 2018 12:45 pm

GrahamH wrote:
TopCat wrote:
GrahamH wrote:It's not just a numbers game.

Ah, apologies!

I misinterpreted the 'just' as 'merely', I didn't realise that you meant that it is a numbers game, as well as being something else.

Ok, if you don't like the 1:5 ratio, what would tip the balance?

20?

Four random strangers, plus a loved one?

Having noted that I don't accept that it is just a numbers game why do you try to reduce it to one?
There is no ratio I would be comfortable with. There will be some number I'd compromise over but I don't know what it would be.
I don't believe I would resort to murder of innocent people to save a loved one.

Are you sure of that? Or are you just saying what you think you are supposed to say?

I wouldn't push a fat guy into the path of a train. It's a cold sick thing to do.

That's different. It's unambiguously wrong to do that.

GrahamH · **#59** by **GrahamH** » Jan 04, 2018 1:08 pm

DavidMcC wrote:Are you sure of that? Or are you just saying what you think you are supposed to say?

It's what I think. It has nothing whatever to do with "what you are supposed to say".
I doubt I am unusual in that, but maybe you and most other people would slaughter any bystander in a heartbeat if it would save their own kin. Fortunately the law prohibits anyone testing such tendencies experimentally.

DavidMcC wrote:
I wouldn't push a fat guy into the path of a train. It's a cold sick thing to do.

That's different. It's unambiguously wrong to do that.

If it's "unambiguously wrong" to do that how can it be right to do it because of personal bias?
I grant that your bias may make all the difference to you, but it can't make something "unambiguously wrong" ethical. It's still objectively wrong but you do it anyway.

felltoearth · **#60** by **felltoearth** » Jan 04, 2018 1:33 pm

Your choice is Hitler or Donald Trump. It's a 1:1. GO!

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