The Trolley Problem in the Context of Killing and Letting Die

You are perhaps familiar with the Trolley problem. It is a question of whether you should kill one to save many. Most people say that yes, you should flip the switch, killing the one but letting the five live. Some people say that you should not. Perhaps the most compelling argument for this latter position is a deontological one. This argument states that each person is an end in himself and not just a means to an end. It would therefore be disrespectful to the one person to use him as a means to save the five.

Whether or not this argument can apply relies on the distinction between killing and letting die. Let us assume for a moment that killing is worse than letting die; let us assume that if you let someone die when you could have prevented it, you are not responsible for the death. In that case, it is not disrespectful to allow the five people to die; they were going to die anyway, and you did not cause their death. But it is disrespectful to kill the one person to save the other five, because you are directly causing the death.

Now let us assume that killing and letting die are equivalent when all else is equal. If you are able to prevent a death but you don’t, you are just as responsible for the death as if you had killed the person yourself. In this case, you are responsible for the five people dying even though you didn’t directly cause it, simply because you could have prevented it. In this light, the trolley situation is somewhat muddled. No matter what you do, you are disrespecting at least one person as an end. From there I can see two stances. It is arguable that it does not matter what you do since either way you are treating someone as a means rather than an end. It is also arguable that it is better to be respectful to more rational beings than to fewer, so you should kill the one rather than let the five die (remember that here we are assuming the equivalence of killing and letting die).

If we are upholding moral duty, it matters greatly whether or not letting die is equivalent to killing. It is thus important to examine killing and letting die in the context of scenarios that it may not seem to be directly related to.

Article of the Day: Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and Elitism

This political article is from a couple of years ago, but it is still relevant, and I quite like it. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I do agree with much of what is said. Elitism is underrated.

A Very Confused National Geographic Article

Whoever wrote this article apparently wants to feel smart, and wants the readership to feel smart, but is doing some serious muddling of ideas.

Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals, part 2

A continuation of this post. I will be critiquing the beginning of the first chapter of the Groundwork. I am working from a translated version that can be found here.

Article of the Day: It’s Charisma, Stupid

Yet another Paul Graham essay.

In this episode, Graham proposes that the factor in getting Presidents elected is not their policies, but their charisma.

As I looked further back, I kept finding the same pattern. Pundits said Carter beat Ford because the country distrusted the Republicans after Watergate. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. Four years later, pundits said the country had lurched to the right. But Reagan, a former actor, also happened to be even more charismatic than Carter (whose grin was somewhat less cheery after four stressful years in office). In 1984 the charisma gap between Reagan and Mondale was like that between Clinton and Dole, with similar results. The first George Bush managed to win in 1988, though he would later be vanquished by one of the most charismatic presidents ever, because in 1988 he was up against the notoriously uncharismatic Michael Dukakis.

This is an interesting point. Also, though, it is worth noting that charisma cannot be the only factor. In terms of popular vote, elections are not often won by more than 10%, and the widest margin ever recorded was 26% (source). People sometimes disagree on who is charismatic, but in general people will agree. Therefore the entire election cannot be based on charisma. Graham is not saying that it is; rather, he is saying that it is the deciding factor. I agree. Perhaps 70-90% of the vote is based on policy; only the other 10-30% is based on charisma. But on policy, the country is quite evenly split. Because of this, the relatively small percentage of the vote that is based on charisma is still enough to affect the outcome of the election.

The Art of Hypertext

Much like any other sort of writing, blog writing is an art form. But one crucial part of this art form that is not found in hardly any other medium is the art of hyperlinking and hypertext: knowing exactly which words should be turned into links to other sites. Great bloggers are often identified by the quality of their hypertext.

I know of one blogger in particular who has especially impressive hypertext. She writes about scientific topics, and always provides just the right links in just the right places for you to understand what she’s talking about and to supplement her writings. You see, creating hypertext isn’t just about hyperlinking the right word, although that’s a big part of it. You have to hyperlink a word that is relevant to what the site is about, something that will give you an idea of what you’re clicking on. But there is more to it than that. Hypertext can be used to fill gaps in the reader’s knowledge base, and to provide sources for external material.

Another key trick is finding links that effectively describe what you want to describe. It is usually not too difficult to find a decent site, but to find a truly great source requires a master.

The Art of Hypertext is not simple. It is a very critical component of a blog. In fact, there should be some sort of blogging award for most dexterous usage of hypertext.

Educational Categorizations

In school, we have certain educational categorizations. We have math, science, language arts, social studies; beyond the academic realm we have a wide variety of subjects such as foreign language, music theory, and even typing class. Some of these categorizations make sense. Still, though, why are math, science, language arts, and social studies deemed the “core” subjects, more important than all others?

At first glance, it seems that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the working world. To an extent, this is true. But as an extension of that, the purpose of education is ideally to prepare students for the world. Does it adequately serve its purpose?

It is widely agreed that the public school system in America is flawed. I believe that improvements within each subject could sufficiently improve the education system. I have a whole post regarding science education; I feel that I have the most to say about science, but I have also commented on the other three subjects.

These improvements to the different individual academic subjects are extremely important. At the same time, they are limited by some broad barriers. Subjects may intermix, but only to a limited extent. Ideally, education would form a web reaching across all areas of interest. Music theory and geography would have certain links. This may sound far-fetched, but think of it this way. The way we learn is by comparing our knowledge to something we already know. We make associations. This is why it’s easy to learn vocabulary words if we can identify root words that we already know. Because of our tendency to make these associations, an education branching across all classes and subjects will, if done right, be much more effective than a series of isolated disciplines.

With this considered, are the current divisions between different course subjects really optimal? I suspect not. But when compared to other educational systems, our current courses seems very apt. Look at the medieval Quadrivium as an example: the four main subjects were arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Talk about a narrow education!

Article(s) of the Day: Sleep

I found this article (it’s a download, but only PDF so you don’t have to be afraid of viruses) about adolescent sleep patterns to be fascinating.

There is also this article about how sleeping is contagious.

Science Education

The current state of science education in primary and secondary education is far from ideal. The purpose of science education should not be to teach facts about science, but to teach how to think scientifically.

Nearly every moment I have spent in science class has been spent learning about something that was already discovered. I learned about the different phyla of animals, about the periodic table, about meiosis, about covalent bonds, you name it. But has this fostered in me a better understanding of science? Frankly, no. The best science education I have got has been from reading about science on the internet, from websites and from science blogs like Pharyngula. On the internet I have read about how to examine the veracity of scientific claims. I think that this is one of the most important tenets of a science education. But have we ever gone over this in science class? No.

Another pillar of science education is not what science has discovered, but how it has discovered it. Sure, every year we briefly look at the “scientific method”, but all we really do is memorize five or six steps in what is supposedly the quintessential scientific process. What is really important is that we are able to take some phenomenon and find a legitimate explanation. This phenomenon doesn’t have to be “scientific”: it can be any sort of empirically testable phenomenon, including something that comes up in real life. For example, through science education you should be able to more effectively answer the question, Is my friend telling the truth, or is his story completely made up? That is where science really shines.

But in addition to this, we must remember that there are certain things that it simply helps to know. And some aspects of science are simply fascinating. Maintaining a proper balance will not be easy; still, at the moment the balance is much too far towards the side of facts rather than the side of investigation.

Ideally, how would science be categorized? As it is, we have Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and high school students spend one year on each. (The classification in elementary and middle school is more vague.) These categorizations are convenient, and could probably remain this way while at the same time emphasizing more critical thinking. In Biology, students could study creationism vs. evolution — this is how I developed most of my critical thinking abilities — although that might not end so well given the history of conflict between those subjects. I know of no other obvious tests of critical thinking for other subjects, but I’m sure they exist. A clever science teacher could think of plenty of things to do.

Implementing an environment to foster critical thinking may be difficult. I know that at least for me, no one could have made me learn it. But they could have made the tools more readily available. Through the internet, I was able to find plenty of tools; but I had to look for them. It would have been easier, and I would have started sooner, had those tools been presented in the science classroom.

The problem still remains, though, of how you teach people to think critically. I hypothesize that people will learn on their own if presented with the proper tools. The real trick to critical thinking is really just thinking. I remember that after seeing What The Bleep Do We Know, I believed everything in it. But after someone pointed out to me just how ridiculous some of its claims were, I instantly realized that, yes, it didn’t really make sense at all. The problem there was that I was simply trusting what was said without thinking about it at all. If I had considered the claims made even a little, I would have easily seen their absurdity. Then, is it as simple as asking the question, “Is this for real?” In many cases, I think so.

Which brings me to another important pillar of science education: objectivity. Something useful in science as well as in life is the ability to judge a situation dispassionately, and to try to remove one’s own biases. Completely eliminating your own biases is extraordinarily difficult, but it should be the role of science education to help out. One thing that I find helps enormously is to talk to other people about what your biases might be. On my other blog, I have questioned my own assumptions numerous times thanks to the feedback given to me by some very intelligent commentators.

Facts are important. But so is critical thinking. So is objectivity. So is understanding how to go about making a discovery, be it a new field in Quantum Mechanics, or whether or not the Chevy Malibu is a better deal than the Ford Explorer. Science is fascinating, but its true value comes from its ability to expand your mind and heighten your thinking. This is what ought to be reflected by science education.

Median Utilitarianism

Recently I’ve been thinking about different sorts of averages. The mean average is the most common: add up all the values, and divide by how many values there are. But another useful average is the median average: put all the values in a line, and take the one in the middle. This is useful for some types of averages. For example, if you want to find the average person’s income, the mean would not be very accurate since people like Bill Gates would push the average up. But a median average would be more reasonable.

This got me to thinking about Utilitarianism. On one particular axis, the two types of Utilitarianism are what could be called Average Utilitarianism and Total Utilitarianism. They may have more proper names, but I think that those are descriptive enough. The basic idea there is that Total Utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness and minimize suffering overall, while Average Utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness and minimize suffering only for the average person. This is when I started thinking about what kind of average we’re talking about here. Mean average is the type that people usually talk about. But using a median average would possibly be more advantageous. For example, it would be the solution to problems such as the Mere Addition Paradox, also known as the Repugnant Conclusion. The basic idea is that, according to Total Utilitarianism, a great massive population filled with people whose lives are barely worth living is more valuable than a small population filled with people whose lives are rich and enjoyable. Median Utilitarianism solves this problem (so does Mean Utilitarianism).

Another problem solved by Median Utilitarianism is the problem of the Utility Monster. The best description I can find on the web is from a blog:

The “utility monster” was one of philosopher Robert Nozick’s objections to utilitarian theory.

Nozick postulated a creature who received 100 units of utility (pleasure, happiness) per unit of resource consumption, in a universe where everybody else received 1 unit of utility per unit of resource consumption. In this type of universe, Nozick argued, utilitarian would require that all of the people who got lesser utility be sacrificed (give up any and all resources) to the utility monster. This moral demand for sacrifice, however, is absurd. Therefore, basic utilitarianism is defeated by means of a reduction to absurdity.

Median Utilitarianism fixes this problem on an intuitive level. By Median Utilitarianism, making more and more people unhappy to support the happiness of one being is not actually a good thing, since it reduces median happiness — but notice that it still increases total and mean happiness.

Median Utilitarianism probably has problems of its own, but it resolves these two objections to Utilitarian moral theory.