

The Moral Sense Test - mhb
http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/index2.html

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seles
All 10 questions were variants of the trolley problem. The problems were also
poorly formed which is what made answering them difficult, not the actual
moral dilema. For example, in the real trolly problem it is clear that you
really only have two options flip the switch or not, it is hard to imagine
there are other alternatives. But in many of these problems, it is hard to
believe there is not a better option available, even though the problem states
"but the only way..."

~~~
dkarl
Yes, they were quite poorly formed, which renders the study entirely
pointless. The idea behind these problems is to collect people's intuitive
reactions to simple, clear situations. If the problems are so poorly formed
that intuition simply rejects them, the exercise is useless, except as a study
in human frustration. (Perhaps that's the point? It would explain the poor UI
design.)

Several situations present you with the option of causing one immediate and
fairly certain death to prevent several more distant, much more speculative
deaths. You can't predict the path of a boulder down a mountain. A boulder
that would be stopped by one person would be unlikely to kill five. The man
driving the injured people to the hospital actually has little idea how
quickly he needs to get them there to save their lives. The certainty
presented in the problems is so unreal that they might as well have been posed
in an entirely abstract way in the first place.

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petercooper
This test uses a variant of the good old "trolley dilemma"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem>) where a trolley/train is
headed for five workmen on a track and it asks if you'd pull a lever to divert
the trolley onto a track where only one man is working. (This test then goes
on to vary that situation somewhat.)

Studies have been run on this in the past and to my dismay most people would,
in the initial scenario, flick the switch to save five but kill one -
immediately becoming murderers rather than bystanders. I suspect this test is
trying to weed out what could make people flip-flop from one point of view to
the other, as when replaced with "pushing a fat man off a bridge to block the
trolley" the stats have tended to swing the other way.

~~~
frig
Involvement in the world isn't voluntary; actions have consequences, some
people prefer some consequences to other consequences.

In your case you value maintaining an unsullied self-image over assisting 5
people in mortal peril, and would prefer if other people saw your choice the
same way.

But you're right (I've met people who were familiar with the people involved
here): the intuition is that the stronger the perceived interpersonal
relationship between you and the unlucky bloke the less likely you are to
flick the switch, but teasing out exactly how much relationship is needed to
make the moral intuition flip is tricky business.

~~~
petercooper
_In your case you value maintaining an unsullied self-image over assisting 5
people in mortal peril, and would prefer if other people saw your choice the
same way._

"Maintaining an unsullied self-image" is largely what personal moral codes are
about. If I actively killed someone, I would find being a murderer harder to
cope with than being a _witness_ to the death of a larger number of people.

I think this is a purely moral standpoint, whereas "killing one to save the
five" is the result of people playing a "numbers game." I think this is
demonstrated by the opposing results of the "push the fat man off the bridge"
dilemma - once you change the mechanism from a lever/switch to actually
pushing a dude off a bridge, people's sense of morality comes rushing back.

~~~
frig
This is the argument of the ages, no?

I would say moral codes are about trying to use your agency to do good, not
bad; there's no obvious reason why "doing good" would always and everywhere
equate with "easy to cope with".

You claim you're not doing a #s game but I think I can prove that you are,
even if you're not yet aware of it.

Consider this alternative scenario: the trolley is hurtling towards the 5 men
as before and you've got the option of throwing a switch; what's new is that
_this time_ the switch moves the train into an empty railyard, saving the five
lives at no one's expense.

The #s game is removed and it's just a case of: do you think yourself morally
obligated to throw the switch and save the lives, or not?

Careful here.

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dstorrs
These tests just annoy the crap out of me. I put up with the first few
questions because I wanted to see if they would do something novel. But no,
they had all the standard problems of morality tests:

1) False dichotomy. (There are _exactly_ two actions you can take, no more.)

2) Unrealistic foreknowledge. (These are _exactly_ what the results of these
actions will be.)

3) Unrealistic scenarios. (How many of us are ever going to be standing with
our foot stuck in the tracks of the sideline right near the switch when five
other people are...blah blah blah.)

This kind of test is exactly what gives philosophers a bad reputation. They
are studying important issues; could they /please/ take the time to build a
test that respects the intelligence of the testee?

~~~
gort
These are simplifying assumptions; it's rather like a scientific experiment
that aims to control for other factors, in order to distill the experiment
down to its essential core.

~~~
dstorrs
Assume a spherical cow....

------
ilitirit
_Andrew has been kayaking and is six miles from the nearest town. He hears on
the WBZ4 radio station that the damn has broken upstream and that the river is
about to flood._

Spelling and grammar mistakes reduce your credibility.

~~~
bwillard
Interesting, my radio station was not WBZ4, it was WBZ60. This corresponds
well with the observation in other comments that there was some numerical
priming going on that might have been the real point of the study and not the
moral part of it.

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req2
Joshua Greene's thesis provides us with some ways to think about how we think
about these problems. There's some nice excerpting, and ensuing discussion, at
lesswrong:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/10f/the_terrible_horrible_no_good_ve...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/10f/the_terrible_horrible_no_good_very_bad_truth/)

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zargon
I have no patience for these contrived dilemmas that few people will ever
encounter. When humanity is done making war with one another then maybe we
could ask these questions. But until then it is like treating someone's skin
rash and ignoring that they are in cardiac arrest.

~~~
ismarc
Why do you think there are wars? It has to do with the moral standing and
beliefs of the leaders who wage those wars. These types of tests are actually
very appropriate for "treating" the problem of war. One life for one more
important one, or one life for many, or a few lives for many are the
foundations of war. Is the study and the results a fix for these things? No.
But they can give a much greater understanding of the decisions people are
willing to make, allowing for better judgement of reactions ot situations.

