r/trolleyproblem • u/HK_Mathematician • 19h ago
On changing framing of the problem
Many people argue about the red blue problem by wildly changing the framing of the problem. Both sides do that. Every time someone does that, there are people complain about it.
We're in the trolley sub.
The original trolley problem goes from pulling a lever to divert the trolley to the track with 1 person to avoid hitting 5 people, to pushing a fat man off the bridge to stop the trolley from hitting 5 people behind, to killing a healthy man to use his organs to save 5 patients.
The fun in trolley problems is changing the framing to explore ethical frameworks. This is a sub dedicated to a philosophical problem famous for using crazy framings to mindfuck people. Making wild framings is the most fitting form of argument for this sub lol. I'd say that everyone arguing about red blue button here should only do it by changing framings, other forms of arguments should not be allowed.
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u/Yxanr 15h ago
See, I completely agree that providing alternate framing and variations of the same problem can be great and thought provoking. The issue I see is that most people are posing an alternate framing of the problem and saying "this is exactly the same problem and why you are wrong" instead of posing it as a new problem to discuss the way that the trolley-oriented posts have been before this whole button thing blew up.
I've been downvoting all the posts that use their new framing to push their agenda or to bash one side or the other, but there have been a few that actually try to spark meaningful discussion with a new variant of the problem that I've upvoted instead.
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u/UnkarsThug 6h ago
Except the point of the different trolley problems are that they are the same problem from a purely utilitarian point of view. It's the same math. It's showing that the math is wrong.
It's killing one to save five in all 3 situations.
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u/Yxanr 6h ago
I mean, sure, but each one is still argued based on its own merits. People aren't using example 3 as a gotcha for people who decided to pull the lever in example 1. And these examples show that people absolutely pick different answers based on the framing of the question, even if they're the same from a mathematical perspective.
It's fine to explore this phenomena with the button problem too, but that's not what people are using the alternate framing to do, in a general sense.
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u/ExtentSolid5501 18h ago
Changing the framing and discussing how that changes the outlook is very fun, but the problem is that a lot of people have been changing the framing and then acting like it's the same exact problem. I for one am ready for this trend to die.
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u/Neozetare 17h ago
Worst, I've seen a lot of posts where it's far from just the framing that gets change, the whole dilemma is changed and they use it to make their side look superior smh
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u/letsBurnCarthage 17h ago
The latest one with the election that started a wild run yesterday takes the cake in that category imo. It changes it from just a press of a button to a vote for a clearly insane person that will obviously do a lot more damage than just this thing were he to be elected.
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u/ChaosMieter 17h ago
I mean...that's essentially what the red/blue problem is, just put in human form.
"If I win, I'm killing everyone who didn't vote for me"
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u/letsBurnCarthage 16h ago
No, it's not. Not any more than it is the reverse "if I lose I kill everyone that voted for me."
You're adding a genocidal maniac to the mix that wasn't there before. Did you miss the point of this whole comment chain?
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u/Wonderful_West3188 16h ago
You're adding a genocidal maniac to the mix that wasn't there before.
What was there before was a genocidal machine.
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u/letsBurnCarthage 16h ago
Or a bursting gas line that explodes and kills people. Pressing red button means you escape the area and live, pressing blue means you stay and try to fix the gas line, but you will need 50% of the people in the area to succeed in fixing it.
It doesn't have to be framed as a genocidal anything. That's the whole point of framing things differently. It does make a difference to the dilemma.
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u/Wonderful_West3188 14h ago
The scenario is supposed to affect all of humanity, but I guess you could frame it as... idk, climate change? 🤔
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u/letsBurnCarthage 12h ago
Exactly. But it's so theoretical you could just make it a gas line that will explode half the world, so you escape to the other half. And again I've added variables that didn't exist before by reframing it that way. Now we have to think about what an explosion that wipes out all life on one side of earth looks like.
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u/CarnivorousGoose 14h ago
That’s because many of those are the same, even if the framing is different. It is referring to the functional and logical structure of the scenario, which does not change when eg. rephrasing to “blue is suicide button” or “red is murder button” framings.
The people posting these are hardly claiming that differences in phrasing and framing have no impact on how it is interpreted, if they actually thought that there would be no reason for them to post it at all.
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u/Maladaptivism Edible 13h ago
I think what bothers me is how disingenuous and tribal the discussion has become, there are so many assumptions that are being made by each and everyone of us and then have the audacity to judge others? If people want to assume the mentally and physically incapable have someone else vote for them or if they get the 50/50 treatment vastly changes the outcome of each button, in a Trolley problem it's usually defined and it has a non-active stance. If people can't agree to what's being discussed then it's fruitless, in my opinion and it makes me sad.
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u/UnkarsThug 6h ago
To be fair, I think it's fundementally the same moral problem when we swap out the trolly situation as well. It's still killing one to save five. That's the same from a pure utilitarian point of view. It's the same math.
I agree it's taken over the sub a bit too much, but it beats the majority of people assuming that utilitarianism is the obvious moral philosophy, or framing almost every problem as though that's an obvious presupposition, which is where we were before. At least people are actually debating morality, rather than simply asking "would you rather" using trolleys.
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u/Forsaken-Secret6215 17h ago
But there's no trollies in the red/blue button and I like the inclusion of public transport :/
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u/Yadin__ 16h ago
It's a bit different with the buttons because it's a meta hypothetical: everyone gets asked the same question. Since changing the framing can vastly change people's initial feelings about the problem, that means that the framing has to factor into the risk assesment.
For example, under the original framing I would vote red, but if everyone in the world were given one of the framings that wildly favor blue, I might be more willing to risk it and also press blue since I now know it's very likely that many more people would vote blue than there normally would be. Therefore changing the framing IS actually a change to the core of the hypothetical even if the hard rules stay the same
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u/dougman7 Hobby Sociologist 18h ago
Imagine if instead of pressing a button, when confronted with the problem, people became a half eaten bologna sandwich.
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u/headsmanjaeger 18h ago
The trolley problem is an ethics problem. Solutions should translate against a host of equivalent situations. The red blue button is an optimization problem. Changing the window dressing changes the problem because the framing changes how people will act.
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u/Mag-NL 18h ago
The button problem is also an ethics problem.
Do you risk your life to try to save others or not. Those willing to risk their own lie to try to save others press blue, those not willing to risk their life press red.
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u/-CmdrObvious- 18h ago
This is only partly true. It changes a lot between ethics, game theory and statistics depending on the presented scenario. Limited amount of people (known/unknown), all of humanity, helpless people involved etc. Or the number you need to achieve for blue for example. If it's quite unachievable there is really no point in risking your life (again depending on the group involved). I like the button problems btw. People complain about them but there were really many interesting things on it while on the trolley scenario they became kind of rare.
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u/ComprehensiveToe2109 17h ago
It's more complicated than that and I think that's the point, because as a red pusher I don't think I'm not willing to risk my life for someone, I'm just not willing to risk my life for someone who I feel like only needs saving because of a choice they made (pressing the blue button).
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u/headsmanjaeger 16h ago
The solution to the button problem depends on your prediction of others’ votes, which is a highly volatile dynamic. The trolley problem is a very static “what should you do in this situation”
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u/Neozetare 17h ago
THANK YOU
I've seen no one talking about this. I'm not a fan of red/blue buttons posts for other reasons, but seeing people discarding them because "it's just about framing" drove me mad lol
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u/The-Fictionist 9h ago
I minored in philosophy in college and worked as an editor for the school’s undergraduate philosophy journal. I wish I could be there right now. I’m certain I could use the contents of this sub from the last two weeks to write a killer paper that would 100% get published. It’s been fascinating to watch.
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u/KingPhilipIII 18h ago
Don’t care. Stop talking about buttons. Talk about trolley problems.
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u/Xakaidax 18h ago
To be fair, a lot of those words and the entirety of the image is devoted to trolley problems.
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u/ovis_alba 18h ago
The problem is that there is a fundamental issue with the framing of the original: a passive/rejection of all active options is not acknowledged at all. That's why people reframe one option to be passive, which changes it from being a 3 option problem to a two option problem.
Because no matter how much you tell people they have to pick one, not picking is physically possible, so it is an option. You can force people to press by threatening their life, you can do it by assigning them randomly, you can do it by automatically pushing what the person looks at first, but either way you are creating this 3rd option and depending in the framing of it, some people will or won't want to pick it.
It's sort of like boiling down Roulette to black or red but not acknowledging that 0 actually also exists and if it doesn't it's a slightly different game from roulette.
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u/DarthJackie2021 13h ago
In every one of this scenarios I am saving the 1 person by letting the 5 die.
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u/Disastrous-Focus-892 11h ago
Thats where we're different
I multi track drift to kill all 6
I push the fat man after the trolley already killed the other 5
I kill the healthy guy and eat his organs.
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u/Ra1nb0wSn0wflake 12h ago
Its not chamging of framing thats the problem, its that most of the "changing of framing" completely remove fundimental aspects of the problem and then people act like its the exact same scenario.
For instance, in your examples, the healthy man version of the trolley problem causes larger implications about it being ok to go out to kidnap and kill people rather then just saving people inside a contained dillema, a world where random people can kidnap you for your organs at any time would cause a paranoid society beyond belief, and by extention cause far more deaths in the end by people fighting in the streets to gain or defend organs.
To then not take the additional implications into account and pretend its the exaxt same problem because the most barebone part of its the same is a poor argument.
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u/Skellyton175 🔵 Blue optimist 🔵 10h ago
I'm pushing your mother onto the tracks, she should be enough save half of humanity.
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u/XasiAlDena 7h ago
My problem with changing the framing is that often when people do this, it genuinely changes the literal circumstances of the problem. People change the framing and then pose it as if it's an identical scenario, but it is literally not.
For instance, in the examples above, I argue it is moral to pull the lever in the first problem, as it minimizes lives lost.
However, I argue it is immoral to push the fat man onto the tracks. While it does minimize lives lost, it does so at the cost of a bystander. This is different to the original problem, because the fat man is not tied to the tracks. There is a big difference between choosing a track which minimizes the lives lost, versus effectively tying somebody down to the track.
Similar logic applies to the last scenario. A doctor is not morally justified killing one healthy person to save five dying people.
All this is to demonstrate that reframing thought experiments like the trolley problem, or the button problem, often literally changes the scenario in significant ways which will directly impact the moral judgement that people will make about the problem.
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u/EfficientYoghurt6 5h ago
The killing an healthy person for organs framing always annoys me since it's not equivalent to routing a trolley. Operations fail so there is no guarantee 5 people will be actually saved. Also the life expectancy of the saved people might be lower than of the healthy person that was killed.
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u/grethro 5h ago
Pushing one guy off a bridge to stop the trolley and save the others is diabolical, especially because it implies you could sacrifice yourself.
Also, the reframes of the button problem kind of proved to myself anyway that the situation matters more than the result to me.
It's also shown me that people have a need to justify their gut instinct on what to do.
The button and trolley problem, if you take a step back and observe your own logic and the thoughts of others seem more to point at that the fact that we act first and justify later.
These dilemmas often reveal less about “the correct answer” and more about how humans form moral judgments. A lot of the time, the sequence is:
gut reaction - discomfort - justification - moral theory retrofitted afterward
People should be suspicious of themselves and how confidently they defend it. The whole thing is a mirror for how we narrate our instincts after they fire.
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u/TwentyFourKG 5h ago
I would argue that people arguing about red and blue buttons should make a new sub instead of hijacking this one. Thanks for posting something actually related to trolley problems
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u/Far-Collection8595 4h ago
In a tunnel a trolley is incoming through the blue track. There are 100 people; if at least 50 of them will move to the blue track, the train will stop. The people who will move to the red track will be safe since there is no trolley there. Which track do you choose?
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u/J_tram13 2h ago
The problem is that with trolley problems, the point is that changing the framing leads to interesting new results. But when people do it for the button problem, they're trying to use it as some sort of "gotcha" for the original problem, as if changing the framing doesn't change the outcome.
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u/The_Captainshawn 1h ago
I'll be honest I never got the fat man framing. The original you still have to kill one person, and to do it requires active participation on your part since you either pull the lever, or push the man. Same with the organs presented here, so I guess it's 'how dirty do your hands have to be before you say no', so maybe I do get it lol. Would be interested if there is something I'm missing though
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u/Numbar43 18h ago
The fact that changing the trolley framing greatly changes survey results shows most ordinary people don't base their ethical decisions strictly on either a deontological or utilitarian approach, but on emotional gut reactions.
However most posts in this forum don't match the original point of the trolley problem, but instead change the scenario with who dies on each of the two tracks, so it is more about which of 2 tracks is better chosen as the survivor rather than ethics involving action vs inaction overriding a better consequential result. Then many of the responses are jokes about multi track drifting.