Category Archives: The dismal science

This post makes some very good observations about the nature of uncertainty and the value, as well as the cost, of additional information. But it uses a personal pet peeve as the point of departure for the article, that of the so-called Trolley Problem. The people who pose it argue that the two options (saving four lives by throwing a lever that results in five people being saved at the cost of another person dying, versus saving four lives by throwing a fat man off a bridge) are morally equivalent, yet the fact that most people say they will throw the lever but will reject throwing the fat person off the bridge is a cognitive bias.

Hogwash. They aren’t comparable. The throwing a fat person off a bridge (to stop a train) is presumably meant to eliminate the “what about me jumping off the bridge” option. Second, I’d wonder if I could in fact succeed in shoving someone over. And third and potentially the most important, if you do succeed in pushing the fat person in front of the train, you are unquestionably guilty of first degree murder. Tell me how you talk your way out of it if you are caught. You were knowingly planning to have the man serve as a human brake to the train and that that would be fatal. By contrast, if you flip the lever, you can say “I was trying to save five people” and profess uncertainty as to what would happen to the other person who winds up getting killed.

In fairness, the article does treat the two cases as representing more differences from an informational perspective than most who use it as an device do, but not as pointedly as I’d like. So please try to take the horrible Trolley Problem in stride and focus on the meat of the article.