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If these are tracks in the US then I just understaff the engineers and maintenance teams and the train derails before I have to make a decision, checkmate.
If these tracks are in the US, so I am. So I shoot the other guy with the gun(s) I usually carry around when I go out and then pull the lever.
This feels too high quality for a shit post.
Gotta make sure your fiber intake is decent so you get good quality shit like this
wow what an excellent day in the neighbourhood
i sure hope I won’t be faced with an ethical dilemma in the very near future
This was super funny, this person has a great career ahead of her. Very Tim and Eric style obscure indie comedy, I loved it.
This isn’t philosophy anymore, it’s just game theory
it’s interdisciplinary.
por qué no los dos
holy prisoner dilemma!
I was thinking the same!
But what is philosophy really?
Not even. Game Theory is supposed to take a lot of stuff into account. Boiling it down to this is insulting and a way to paint situations like proxy wars as immoral.
for the longest time, i did know that game theory did not have anything to do with “games” and that it is somehow connected to the prisoners dilemma, but the concept as such wasn’t very clear to me. If you are like my former me, take 30 minutes out of your day and visit https://ncase.me/trust/ to learn and play around with game theory; it’s a great webpage and it’s pretty good fun all around.
I did a few game theory simulations in college and they were always real interesting. In one of them for example, it was a multiplayer game, with multiple interactions. I think it was to simulate global trade basically: you could cooperate with as many players as you want and each time you cooperate you both get a point. If you defect then you get two and they get none. However, all the players could see what the other players are doing, so if you defected they would know and probably would play (trade) with you. The best way to win was to form as many connections as possible and fully cooperate the whole time.
I formed maybe like 20-30 connections with other players and didn’t defect. Each point was worth a few cents or something. So I walked out with a check for like $20-$50 or something. Many players walked out with nothing because they cheated too many people too many times and nobody wanted to trade with them.
Therefore, clearly, the best economic policy is protectionism, tariffs, trade wars, and fucking over both allies and enemies, right? Right?!?
Your simulation seems to only punish selfish actors when that’s not always the case. Doesn’t include natural monopolies, lacks clandestine exploitation, and there’s likely no market capture or saturation. In such a case the only play is to cooperate.
That page is very well done and interesting, thanks for sharing!
For those interested, Veritasium has a very good video on this. It also sort of tells what strategy is optimal to “win”.
Thank you for sharing the link. That webpage is amazing!
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Unlike the classic prisoners dilemma, this isn’t a nash equilibrium. When I know that the other person pulls their switch, I’d improve my outcome by not pulling mine. Compare to the prisoners dilemma, where not snitching when the other side snitches earns you five years in prison.
And unlike the original trolley problem, pulling the lever will always kill more people. I’d wager most people wouldn’t pull this lever because of this, but I agree there’s no Nash equilibrium.
Which relative is on the track and which in the trolley?
Your hot cousin is on the track. What would you do?
Don’t pull the lever, then there’s three thirds of hot cousin to go around regardless of the other person’s decision. Philosophy is easy.
Easy there Solomon
cut the trolley in half, give one half to each of the thirds of the hot cousin
Split the track in half, and ramp up one side, causing the trolley to drive on two wheels, effectively only slicing the legs off of your loved ones.
It says loved ones I’m afraid, can’t sacrifice one in prison I’m afraid.
Do nothing that way you don’t get to jail for murder. All the pressure goes to the other guy. Sue the railway company, guy who pulled the lever and the creator. Another is find a way not to reach to that point.
I feel like you’re not internalizing that this is a thought experiment.
This is the dumbest thought experiment I’ve ever seen.
Or so you think
I envy you then
Also, it’s too late to pull the lever, you’ll just provoke a crush.
They’ve already both chosen not to pull the lever at this point. Guess they didn’t want to make a wider picture.
This is only superficially a prisoner’s dilemma. In a true one, you cannot get a better result for yourself no matter what the other person does, but here if you assume the other person pulled the lever, there is no reason to pull the lever yourself.
To fix this, you can have 4 relatives on the trolley, and 5 of the opposite faction way back on the middle track. Both do nothing, 1 relative of each is killed. One guy switches the lever, their relatives are all fine, other guy loses 5. Both switch, crash with all 8 relatives on the trolley dead.
I see what you’re trying to do and you’re not necessarily wrong, but you’re kinda perpetuating the attitude that inspired someone to make this meme in the first place
I’m not sure I follow. Should this meme’s creator not have been inspired?
Touche. But no, my point was more of a haphazard reflection on how both the Trolley Problem and Prisoner’s Dilemma are (by design) built on the idea of reducing human life and/or morality and empathy down to a math problem. It is a method of thought that has its purposes, sure, but I think too many people make that their default setting, which makes dehumanization more common, even if subconsciously. Idk man, I’m going through some stuff
Edit: Fixed a pretty bad typo
Given that this problem is given during corporate interviews … it probably screens for the requisite level of sociopathy.
You pull the lever, then pew pew pew the other person near the lever.
Boom.
Did I solve it?
Where’s my prize?
Wait a minute, gotta shoot everyone else related too. Don’t want to face any revenge.
Automatic Weaponry goes brrrr
No witnesses
Okay I saved 1 of my loved ones.
Bingo?
Now theres only one color of people.
Wait am I a racist?
Yell to the guy on the other side that I’m going to pull the lever, so he’d better not.
Then let it go because that both maximizes global utility and poses the lowest risk of the worst case scenario.
“WHAT? I CANT HEAR YOU THE TRAIN IS TOO LOUD!” pulls lever
OOOHHHHH
WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA
Theoretically, will a collision cause a breach of the radioactive material that’s in the box with my cat? Asking for a friend.
Yes and no.
If cat can witness the event, then Yes or No but not both.
If you think about this for any length of time and actually imagine this scenario, you realise you don’t pull the lever and it’s not even close.
Wrong. You pick the obviously wrong moral stance and then aggressively yell about it on the internet. The more obvious it becomes that you are wrong, the louder you yell. This protects your ego from introspection.
SHUT UP. THE RIGHT CHOICE IS TO DROP A NUKE ON EVERYONE.
💡
That’s something a lot of people will do for fun.
that right, I’d masturbate on the tracks and on the people tied to the tracks so they are slipery and can slide or bounce to safety. And before you judge me, its the only thing I’m really good at and we should make the most of what we have in life.
Failing that for whatever reason (or maybe in addition to that), I’d asses which of the prospects are lefties and make sure those people in particular live. Sorry centrists and republicans, but we need the votes and some people have to die, but I’m focussed on doing the least harm here.
wildest trolley solution I’ve seen so far lmao (the slippery jon trons)
But then your loved one (mom, dad, sister,child) dies.
You realize this is your family watching you make the decision to have their vehicle run over a loved one? There’s a possibility they all live if you pull it.
Or if you pull it, then they see you make the decision to risk their lives to kill three other people.
What is better, three lives lost or one life lost?
ok but what if the 3 in the middle were avg US swing state voters.
The other side would deal with them then.
The outcome from both levers pulled is so steep that it really makes no sense to pull the lever
That’s why they won’t pull the lever, and that’s why you should.
They’ll be thinking the same thing tho and if there is a greater than 20% chance of them pulling the lever it’d be worse in terms of losing family members than not pulling at all.
But in terms of overall death, not pulling the lever is 1 or 4, and pulling the lever is 4 or 13
Not really. This would all happen so fast and be emotionally, not logically, driven.
So the lesson is be the first to
marketpull the lever?
But equally that might be what they’re thinking. There’s no simple equilibrium in this game… If your opponent pulls, your best move is not to pull. If they do not, your best move is to do so.
Well, from a pure game theory standpoint, assuming you only value your relatives. This is all somewhat disregarding the three innocents in the middle.
Questions: why doesn’t the person at the switch run and get the person off the tracks? And the people on the trolley hop off or try to the sslow the trolley?
They are tied to their chair with the only thing they can do being flipping the lever. It is the prisoner’s trolley problem
something something about conservation of momentum, them jumping off speeds up the trolley
Not if they jump from the front of the trolley
I’m assuming they’ll try to miss the cow catcher but I get that’s not a fair assumption to make all the time
I think this exposes the sadism of philosophy the past few hundred years.
Often, it’s been some rich idle folks making up murderous fantasies in their heads while looking down at my ancestors . “Oh, you don’t know page 273 of Aristotle’s rejoinder? Haha, you must be too poor”.
