• Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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    11 hours ago

    It understands it just fine. Agency is not a factor in the decision. The choice between action and inaction doesn’t matter. People think it matters because people are driven by shortsighted emotions.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      27 minutes ago

      So philosophical debate on this topic is meaningless, because utilitarism is obviously correct?

      Please take off your clothes and lay down here, I have five patients in desperate need of organ transplants.

    • Skates@feddit.nl
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      16 minutes ago

      What a crock of shit. Living with the knowledge that you killed someone isn’t shortsighted, it’s tragic. You pulling the trigger to switch the trolley to kill only the 1 person can and will have consequences on your own mental health.

      And the comic isn’t even about the choice between action and inaction, it’s about “Oh wow, 5>1, this dilemma is easy lol” - nah, even if you make it purely about the numbers - unless you’re a fucking psychopath, you’re not gonna kill your newborn to save 5 strangers.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      56 minutes ago

      Agency might matter depending on societal context. 5 hot guys might be worse than 1 hot guy in a world with limited resources, for example.

      Everyone knows that 5 of something is usually better than 1. The dilemma comes from finding a situation where that might not be true, and therein exploring some quirks of our own humanity.

      It goes too far when people interpret these quirks as fundamental human traits, but there is genuine merit in testing oneself with fun hypotheticals