Some years ago a couple of students at Lund university in Sweden did an extended survey of the trolley "problem".
They added riders to the basoc set of questions, and also let the respondents self- identify on a political scale. What came as a total surprise to them was that the more conservative the respondent had identified as, the more consistent in how the questions was answered.
The conservatives stuck with their first answer even when the identifiers of the victims were changed. (No matter if the answer was push or not to push - för the conservatives the action as such was what was important.)
The liberals were an even split. About half changed their answers dependant on the identity of the parties involved.
And the socialists (or leftists/vänster) answered almost wholly dependant on identities. If the persons tied to the tracks were called workers and the vicitm a banker nearly a 100% of them pushed the banker in front of the train, but not vice versa.
Oh, and I put problem in quotations as it is not a problem as such but a parlour trick. A person with normal psycho-pathology wouldn't even come up with the idea but would try to find a different way, including risking their own life to throw the switch. And a narcissist or a sociopath wouldn't bother to try at all, since it's not them in font of the train.
A far better exercise is to use a hospital as the setting, and let the repsondent be a doctor in the ER, having to perform triage. That's a real situation, in which the actual doctor cannt simply squirm about with various principled forms of sophistry as rationalisations.
Any bedroom philosopher should endeavour to put herself in a postion where she has to actually put her principles into practice without recourse to excuses or rationalisations.
something is missing though, as often when we describe the ineptness and incompetence of people in power; Trudeau, Macron, Bidden, they mean nothing; we are afraid of naming the real culprits; those who pull the strings attached to our "elected" politicians; to win this historical confrontation, we must name them !
Thanks for the great article. A couple of the links you include don't seem to say what you claim in the article. For example, even though I don't trust the CDC data, I would love to know what the CDC claims is the death rate from covid. As I understand it, the link you provided was to CDC numbers for planning purposes. I couldn't find a clear statement that this was the death rate in the US. Did other people find this? Can anyone provide a link to what the CDC thinks the death rate is? (Those of us here know the difference between dying with covid and of covid are very different numbers, but it'd be interesting to know what the CDC's data claims).
Any update? It's a good question. CDC has lost all trust at this point, but it's important to follow the info CDC puts out, since the normies gobble it up and digest it whole, never thinking critically about the data, or the way a message has been crafted around it.
There is always some triage going on in society. The problem is more incompetence than infringement of freedoms. We have to wear pants, too. The problem with masks is that they were not shown to be effective.
Someone with Ebola should be kept off the street, if necessary by force. But COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines, and vaccines seem useless in most of the West. OTOH, criminalizing the intentional spread of AIDS seems reasonable.
So universally relevant. Thank you.
Thank you for writing ✍️ such a great article -
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Some years ago a couple of students at Lund university in Sweden did an extended survey of the trolley "problem".
They added riders to the basoc set of questions, and also let the respondents self- identify on a political scale. What came as a total surprise to them was that the more conservative the respondent had identified as, the more consistent in how the questions was answered.
The conservatives stuck with their first answer even when the identifiers of the victims were changed. (No matter if the answer was push or not to push - för the conservatives the action as such was what was important.)
The liberals were an even split. About half changed their answers dependant on the identity of the parties involved.
And the socialists (or leftists/vänster) answered almost wholly dependant on identities. If the persons tied to the tracks were called workers and the vicitm a banker nearly a 100% of them pushed the banker in front of the train, but not vice versa.
Oh, and I put problem in quotations as it is not a problem as such but a parlour trick. A person with normal psycho-pathology wouldn't even come up with the idea but would try to find a different way, including risking their own life to throw the switch. And a narcissist or a sociopath wouldn't bother to try at all, since it's not them in font of the train.
A far better exercise is to use a hospital as the setting, and let the repsondent be a doctor in the ER, having to perform triage. That's a real situation, in which the actual doctor cannt simply squirm about with various principled forms of sophistry as rationalisations.
Any bedroom philosopher should endeavour to put herself in a postion where she has to actually put her principles into practice without recourse to excuses or rationalisations.
I don't understand why this hasn't had tens of thousands of 'likes'. It's so good.
If we consider ADE then the track curves back around the mountain towards the original saved group.
something is missing though, as often when we describe the ineptness and incompetence of people in power; Trudeau, Macron, Bidden, they mean nothing; we are afraid of naming the real culprits; those who pull the strings attached to our "elected" politicians; to win this historical confrontation, we must name them !
Thanks for the great article. A couple of the links you include don't seem to say what you claim in the article. For example, even though I don't trust the CDC data, I would love to know what the CDC claims is the death rate from covid. As I understand it, the link you provided was to CDC numbers for planning purposes. I couldn't find a clear statement that this was the death rate in the US. Did other people find this? Can anyone provide a link to what the CDC thinks the death rate is? (Those of us here know the difference between dying with covid and of covid are very different numbers, but it'd be interesting to know what the CDC's data claims).
Any update? It's a good question. CDC has lost all trust at this point, but it's important to follow the info CDC puts out, since the normies gobble it up and digest it whole, never thinking critically about the data, or the way a message has been crafted around it.
No update at this point. 🤷
Great article!
There is always some triage going on in society. The problem is more incompetence than infringement of freedoms. We have to wear pants, too. The problem with masks is that they were not shown to be effective.
Someone with Ebola should be kept off the street, if necessary by force. But COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines, and vaccines seem useless in most of the West. OTOH, criminalizing the intentional spread of AIDS seems reasonable.
One rarely sees the second graphic of the people around the bend....
Have to read full article to see, worth doing