Michael Schur's Answer to "The Trolley Problem" (from "The Good Place")

the trolley experiment or the sorry the trolley problem is this wonderful thought experiment that that uh is such a perfect way to dissect all these different ideas and approaches and um and and you do that very elegantly in the book there's a lot of discussion of the trolley problem and and all of its various permutations um but i don't think that you actually answer it mike sure i don't think you actually weigh in on the trolley problem which is kind of a cop-out i'm just gonna i'm just gonna say it and so i need you to go on record right now in the trolley problem in its most basic iteration what is mike sure's answer well first of all cop out is like the number one move on the part of philosophy professors everywhere like there's constant cop-outs there's other always saying like and why is this the right thing to do you might ask well i'll leave that to the reader to decide or like i'll leave that as an exercise for the students and like it's a total cop-out and i do it like to like four times in the book just to rub it in their faces that they do it all the time but in its most basic in his most basic form the trolley problem is you're on a trolley the brakes fail there's five construction workers on the track you can pull the lever switch onto a different track and kill one other person and most almost everyone says yes i pull the lever and the reason they give is that well five people dying is worse than one person dying and so i will save for human lives and i believe where i land on this is i also believe it is the correct move to pull the pull the lever but not simply because five is more than one that i don't think is the reason it's the right thing to do because if you if you follow that line of thought you get into some weird places where you're like well what if would you kill one innocent person to save a hundred lives well a hundred is more than one so yeah let's kill that innocent person that's no good right like you you ha there there's a the trolley problem is sneaky because it takes your own sense of who you are your own sense of integrity out of the equation momentarily it's like a sleight of hand trick where you don't realize that that's happened you're just put in a situation both outcomes are terrible and you're asked what you would do and because of that you don't think to yourself i need to factor in my view of the world my integrity my own outlook on humanity into this equation you just you're tempted you're distracted by the numbers so you say well five is more than one i don't want five people to die it's better that one person dies so you pull the lever i think that the reason it's the right thing to do to pull the lever is a combination of all of the schools of thought of philosophy a little bit maybe the utilitarian thing of like well we don't know these people they're all the same so yeah five is worse than one a little bit of kant saying that you are you if you imagine a maxim and the maxim is we should try to spare the lives of innocent people whenever possible which it seems like a good universal maxim you could imagine everybody in the world following that maxim right so okay yes then you pull the lever it's a little bit of contractualism which is to say if we're sitting around contractualism is like everyone sits around a table and pitches rules and whatever rules we all agree to those are the rules that we follow so you can imagine and anyone is allowed to to reject any rule so if you were pitching a rule in a contractualist meeting session that said hey um if any of us is ever in a dire situation where some number of people are gonna die and we don't know anything about the people we have no personal relationships to them they're just random people why don't we all agree that we'll try to save as many of them as possible i think most people would agree to that rule right so like when you when you filter when you filter the decision to pull the lever through all of these schools of thought you end up in the same place every time you end up as like i think it's the right move to just pull the lever if you only rely on one of those schools of thought then it's very easy for someone to come along and say aha but how about this similar situation which will lead you to a troubling place and then that's where you get screwed up so i believe it is the right move to pull the lever i just think that the the reason it's the right move is very complicated and needs you need to be drawing on a number of different things including your own sense of right and wrong your own sense of integrity about what you think is right in order to get to that answer

Channel: National Writers Series

Views: 856

Keywords: [Author name], [Book], [Any additional books], [Author name] interview, [book name] interview, NWS, national writers series, author interview, writing [genre], tips for writing [genre], [Key theme], writing, author, advice for writers, how to be a writer, book club, [anything else you think might be interesting]

Id: Jcqav-sl7O8

Length: 4min 52sec (292 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022