Trolley-8

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Trolley

Title text: 10 points to anyone who gets a paper published containing the term sack-blast.

Votey

Explanation

This comic is on a variation of the trolley problem, a highly parodied philosophical ethics problem in which the participant can pull a lever to prevent an event happening, typically one where the outcome is considered to be bad, but there are typically consequences which would in isolation be considered negative, but combined with the typically positive outcome of preventing the other negative event from happening may be considered to be a net positive. The example in this comic weighs the impending death of 500 people about to be run over by the trolley, to prevent it, the trolley will destroy the reproductive organs of one man who would have gone on to father 501 children. A naive look at the problem would suggest 501>500 so you should not pull the lever. It pokes fun at population ethics, as the field cares about potential lives that may exist in the future and what people who are alive now can do to benefit them.

Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

You are in a runaway trolley that can predict the future. You can either kill a crowd of 500 people who are all past reproductive age or you can drive over one guy's nuts. That guy was going to have 501 progeny who will not exist if you use the trolley to absolutely sack-blast him. Which choice is more ethical?

Caption: Studying Population Ethics has completely obliterated my belief in consistent moral frameworks.

Votey Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

Plow the crowd or shard the nard--that is the question that vexes us. 00

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