A lot people I've seen on here like to pose moral dilemmas in a hypothetical way excluding probability. Many of these scenarios are utilitarian in nature.
The perception of probability, which leads to doubt, is one of the most critical variables involved in any moral dilemma. This article is intended to be a reminder.
Trolley Problem
Practically all moral dilemmas I've seen assume that there's a certainty in terms of the consequences of our actions. Let's begin with a famous one:
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. Do you proceed to pull the lever, allowing one person to die while saving five others?
Many answer "yes" in this case, and understandably so.
Nevertheless, what if the one person on the side track was a loved one, such as your child or SO, while the other five people were complete strangers? To make things even simpler, on top of this, what if the five strangers who were tied up were known child rapists?
It's pretty easy to switch our answer in that case. That reveals that our altruistic tendencies are generally not equal for all human beings.
We prioritize certain members of the human species above others. We don't individually prioritize the lives and well-beings of all human beings equally. We're all individually biased to favoring certain lives above others.
This, however, is not the point of the article, but it is another critical variable to take into account when it comes to morality.
Fat Man Trolley Problem
Take the fat man variant of the popular trolley problem.
A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
Of course not. The scenario on its own yields little insight about human behavior. This problem is interesting only in contrast to the original trolley problem since most people answer "yes" in the former case but "no" in this case.
The typical differences in answers here reveals that there is a clear difference between a case where we are directly taking a human life as a consequence of an action versus allowing a human to die as a side effect of an action. It reveals that most of us are incapable of taking actions that directly come at the cost of a stranger's life.
Yet if we look at the fat man scenario itself, it's absurd. How many people would end up in this panicky situation thinking:
OMG, what should I do, what should I do? I know! I'll push a random fat man down to plummet to his doom in front of the trolley believing for certain that his body will stop it.
That's ridiculous. No one would necessarily even think of doing this in such a scenario. Secondly, there is no realistic scenario where someone could be made to believe that pushing a fat man down a bridge can guarantee that it will successfully stop the trolley.
This lack of guarantee is the part I want to focus on.
Probability
Probability, probability, probability.
While we can't always assess it with any certainty, if we can at least avoid a binary style of thinking of 100% guaranteed chance of success or 100% chance of failure, it alters our decisions radically.
Unrealistic Certainty
To highlight how probability is such a critical variable in our actions, let's consider a few cases where we have very unrealistic certainty.
A group of soldiers are stranded in hostile enemy territory. If you send a rescue team, both your rescue team and the stranded soldiers will be tortured and killed. Will you send a rescue team?
No, duh! If we sent the rescue team to their guaranteed doom in such a scenario, it would be outright stupidity.
Let's take another:
A group of soldiers are stranded in hostile enemy territory. If you send a rescue team, both your rescue team and the stranded soldiers will come back completely unharmed with a minimal cost of resources. Will you send a rescue team?
Yes, duh!
Things don't work this way. Practical moral dilemmas don't provide this level of certainty.
Back to Probability
So let's come back to probability and start looking at a more realistic scenario.
A group of soldiers are stranded in hostile enemy territory. If you send a rescue team, you will have to deallocate some resources from those fighting in the front lines which may deprive them of valuable support temporarily. The mission does not guarantee success, and some of the members or possibly all may die in the process. Do you proceed?
Now we're looking at a more realistic scenario, and it becomes a more difficult situation for those in charge. There are tough decisions involved in a leadership scenario. Yet a lot of people often do say "yes" in this scenario, and many of us, regardless of culture, often see heroism in such an action.
That reveals that there's a side in many of us which favors taking risks, rolling the analogical dice, on the account of saving others. We may praise them even if they succeed or fail.
Let's alter things a bit:
If we don't send a rescue team, there is a very faint possibility that those who are stranded may be able to work their way to the front lines and come out of it alive.
Now it becomes an even tougher decision. There is some probability that even lacking a rescue team, the stranded soldiers may be able to claw their way out of hell.
Let's alter things another way:
Surveillance reveals enemies surrounding the stranded soldiers on all sides. They are almost certain to die lacking immediate aid. However, sending the rescue team is almost certain to be a suicide mission. Nevertheless, there is a small fighting chance of success.
This also elevates the difficulty of making a decision. If someone chooses to attempt to save these soldiers anyway, we tend to consider such actions extremely heroic.
False Certainty
The perception of certainty, of believing something has a 100% chance of success or 100% chance of failure, doesn't necessarily need to come from having a magical device that tells us the precise consequences of every possible action.
It can come simply from faith. As an example:
Suppose you are living in a tribe. A seer hands you a baby and prophesizes that this baby is cursed and will grow to kill you, your loved ones, including your own child, and every member of the village if you do not toss the baby into a river. You wholeheartedly believe this prophecy. Will you toss the baby into a river?
Of course we would. For those who think otherwise, I think there's a failure in understanding the "wholeheartedly believe" part of the scenario. That means we accept this prophecy without a shred of doubt. We could even phrase this in a way without accepting any mystical prophecy:
You have a baby in your arms. If you do not immediately throw it in the river, it will grow to kill you, your loved ones, including your own child, and every member of the village. There is no alternate course of action to prevent the deaths of all these people. Will you toss the baby into a river?
Of course we would. The only thing that would steer us otherwise is doubt. If we believe there might be an alternate course of action that has some probability of success and isn't guaranteed to fail, we might explore it to avoid killing this baby. Yet that type of thinking cannot come about in the face of complete certainty.
There is an unbeliever of your religion in your community. If you kill her, you will be granted passage into a paradise of eternal bliss. If you do not, you will be denied passage and spend eternity in limbo. There is no alternative course of action. You either do this and go to paradise or fail to do this and don't. Will you proceed?
Duh, of course we would.
Science
I've attempted to make a case in a previous article that a society guided by critical, scientific thought and empathy could actually allow us to converge on ideas of right and wrong. The gist of the argument is faith vs. faith yields no clear winner.
If we take a Mormon and a Jihadist in a room and try to make them debate each other solely on religious grounds and supernatural claims to support their moral framework, then no one can possibly win in any clear way.
The Mormon cannot make an effective case that baptism is a more effective way towards eternal salvation than martyrdom through suicide bombings. No one can present any data that reliably shows one action to be more effective than the other as a ticket into paradise, let alone show that an afterlife exists in the first place.
As a result we cannot say that suicide bombings are wrong in any way or that baptism is a waste of time if faith is an acceptable criteria to determine what is morally right and wrong. We can only say, for example, that they're misinterpreting ancient scripture, reading from the wrong text, accepting the wrong set of supernatural claims, or something to this effect.
The only way to settle this dispute is to bring people with a scientific mindset and ask both of them:
How can we verify that what you believe about the consequences of your actions is true? Just present both of your hypotheses. We'll choose the side whose hypothesis we can all independently test in a way that produces consistent results.
It's only through rigorous methods of testing and validating assumptions that we arrive at some way of invalidating one or more hypotheses in favor of another.
Utilitarian Morality
A lot of people assume that a society driven by science and empathy would be cold and utilitarian in nature. It's easy to think this when we focus purely on science divorced from empathy, but what people are forgetting is empathy and probability in this equation.
Imagine a group of scientists and engineers came up with a device that could reliably reveal the consequences of every possible action we take. This would be a frightening invention since it would take probability out of the equation.
If I wielded such a device, it may reveal to me that a person I consider a good friend of mine will come to kill my entire family if I don't kill him in advance. There is no alternate scenario. If I attempt to report him to the police as an alternative course of action, they will find no evidence. If I attempt to subdue him, I will fail. If I attempt to change his mind, I will fail. Every possible scenario guarantees failure except a narrow subset of actions that all involve secretly killing him. I must now kill him for the sake of my family.
Again wielding such a device, if I saw a woman in front of a bus and the device showed me that attempting to save her will fail and result in both of us dying no matter what I tried, I wouldn't bother to even try. I'd still care for the stranger and feel bad to see her die, but the device would reveal to me that all possible efforts are guaranteed to fail.
If science advances to this point, it could have dire consequences when it comes to morality and ethics, even with empathy left in the equation. It would also largely eliminate the idea of heroic actions because people would only be heroic when they are guaranteed success. They wouldn't be taking any risks when probability is out of the equation.
Probability
To conclude, probability is such a critical factor when it comes to practical moral dilemmas.
If nothing else, I'm hoping people can start framing more interesting and complex hypothetical scenarios that include probabilities on this site.
I believe these more complex scenarios tend to yield more insight into human nature than ones which provide a level of certainty that only a hypothetical device which perfectly predicts the future can provide.
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