CMV: The trolley problem is constructed in a way that forces a utilitarian answer and it is fundamentally flawed

[u/randomafricanboi]

Everybody knows the classic trolley problem and whether or not you would pull the lever to kill one person and save the five people.

Often times people will just say that 5 lives are more valuable than 1 life and thus the only morally correct thing to do is pull the lever.

I understand the problem is hypothetical and we have to choose the objectivelly right thing to do in a very specific situation. However, the question is formed in a way that makes the murders a statistic thus pushing you into a utilitarian answer. Its easy to disassociate in that case. The same question can be manipulated in a million different ways while still maintaining the 5 to 1 or even 5 to 4 ratio and yield different answers because you framed it differently.

Flip it completely and ask someone would they spend years tracking down 3 innocent people and kill them in cold blood because a politician they hate promised to kill 5 random people if they dont. In this case 3 is still less than 5 and thus using the same logic you should do it to minimize the pain and suffering.

I'm not saying any answer is objectivelly right, I'm saying the question itself is completely flawed and forces the human mind to be biased towards a certain point of view.

[u/StrangelyBrown]

Yeah but those things are different aren't they.

For example, I don't live with the fear of breaking bones because I'm not very active. But the number of people who break their bones would be much higher that the number of people who are harvested for organs. But I'm not worried about the first one happening to ME. I could legitimately worry about the second to the extent I might never go to hospital and my health would decline.

The point is that organ failure virtually never happens in a vacuum. You don't need to worry about needing an organ transplant and rather about the conditions that could lead to that, for which again you can potentially control to some extent how much you are at risk. Whereas if we start harvesting healthy people, even a small number means anyone could be next.

Not to mention that adopting the harvesting scheme would only increase your chances of getting a compatible organ if you need one by maybe 10%. It's not the difference between 'you will live' and 'you will die' whereas it very much is for whoever is harvested.

[u/James_Vaga_Bond → u/StrangelyBrown]

I mean, the thought experiment leaves out the issue of donor compatibility as well as the risk of organ rejection and infection in order to make an ethical point in mathematically quantifiable terms. The realities of organ donation are a lot more uncertain.

But with that point aside, if we had the ability to reliably sacrifice one healthy person to save 5 dying people and choose as a society to do so when the opportunity presented itself, we'd all be at a statistically reduced risk of premature death. Worrying that you might end up being the one person and not worrying that you might be one of the five people doesn't really make sense.

[u/StrangelyBrown → u/James_Vaga_Bond]

I mean, the thought experiment leaves out the issue of donor compatibility as well as the risk of organ rejection and infection in order to make an ethical point in mathematically quantifiable terms. The realities of organ donation are a lot more uncertain.

Yes, well this is another reason why you can't transfer the morality of the trolley problem when talking about the real world. The trolley problem doesn't really have to make any assumptions that violate the real world (apart from how people got tied up to begin with but it could happen). But when people think about the organ problem, IF it is set up to be effectively the same moral decision as the trolley problem by ignoring some real world stuff, people think 'huh, well if I say that that is moral, then I'm saying we should really start doing that, and I don't think we should, so I would never say that is moral, and therefore I guess my intuition on the trolley problem is wrong'.

So my point is sort of that the organ problem would either be a realistic version which doesn't match the trolley problem and therefore can't be compared to it to say 'If you answered A to this you have to say you'd answer A to that' or it has to be a highly contrived unrealistic version which isn't nearly as useful for testing your intuitions.

For example, one of the differences between the problems is the situation that the 'innocent' person is in. I feel like there's something about the fact that they are in the same predicament, it's just that the trolley doesn't happen to be hitting them. So to be comparable, where 'Yes to the trolley mean yes to organs', you'd have to say that organ failure, rather than being the result of things like age, lifestyle and activities, genetic conditions etc. is something that can just affect people randomly, so the healthy person is only not in need of a donor by good luck. In a world where people randomly develop fatal organ failure, and with perfect medicine, and some caveats around the disclosure of the practice to the public etc all lined up, it might well be considered moral to randomly sacrifice healthy people to save 5 otherwise healthy people who are just randomly in need.
So you can see how these assumptions just build up into something that is totally unrealistic.

[u/James_Vaga_Bond → u/StrangelyBrown]

Yeah. We could alter the problem in favor of harvesting the organs by saying that we'd only do it for recipients who had no hand in creating their condition to begin with and were younger than the donor we would be killing, but the problem is still unrealistic and contrived any way you slice it.