On Thu, 2016-07-14 at 13:50 +1000, Brendan wrote: > Yes. It's effectively the trolley problem. Do you throw a fat person > in the way of a runaway trolley in order to save 5 other people?
What the hell has fatness got to do with it? The trolley problem as I understand it has a person at a switch. A runaway train (trolley) is coming down the track. The switch is set so that if nothing is done, the trolley will kill five people standing on the track. If the switch position is changed, the trolley will kill only one person standing on the other track. Should the person at the switch change the setting? Would you, if you were the person at the switch? No requirement for "fatness". It's a clever way of assigning agency and responsibility where none really exists. It also assumes that people are like apples, one much the same as the other. You can play with all the unfairnesses in the question by doing things like specifying that all five on one track are one family, that the one person on the other track is the mother of five children, that the five on one track are criminals on death row (or terminally ill people, or children, or whatever) and so on. The calculus is fatally flawed; the only right answer is "it's a stupid question". The fallacy in the argument as it applies to autonomous vehicles is that autonomous vehicles don't see "people" and cannot weigh outcomes with any subtlety at all. You can't ask "what should the vehicle do in this situation" and then load the situation with value judgements. The result is - a stupid question. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
