In 1967, British philosopher Philippa Foot created a precursor to our self-driving car conundrum. The famous scenario she came up with is known as “the trolley problem.”
Imagine there’s a runaway train hurtling down a train track. Directly ahead of the train, there are five people on the track. Now, imagine that you are too far away to help those five people, but right next to you, there’s a lever that can divert the train onto another track. If you divert the train, the five people will be saved. But here’s the catch. There’s another person on the second track. Now you’re faced with a dilemma. You can either do nothing and the train will kill five people, or you can pull the lever and save their lives, but be directly responsible for one person’s death. What would you do?
When surveyed, most people say that they’d pull the lever and sacrifice one person to save five. It’s for the greater good. But how we say we’d act may not match how we’d actually act if the scenario really happened with real emotions and real lives at stake. This difference between the two would reveal who we are compared to who we want to be.
The reason why people say they will do the greater good is understandable, but behavioral neuroscientist Professor Aaron Blaisdell says what we say might not match what we would do. Mainly because most of the people would freeze in that moment. Because when you’re afraid, that shuts down a lot of action.
But is it even okay to put someone in that place?
Making a decision that can kill or save someone is a big decision. Court judges do this professionally after many years of experience, even if they make mistakes, but that is totally different because they see an argument and listen to the victims. They are making a decision to punish someone, not choosing between two sets of people to die. Making such kind of decision can leave anyone with a permanent scar on their mind. Also, we are not someone who should be able to take actions like this and choose between two sets of people because we are not qualified to judge if someone should live or not. Yet if we don’t make a choice, we are making a choice to let the five people die. So, by not making a decision, we make a decision which might be wrong as well. That’s why putting someone in that place to make a decision could leave a risk of psychological harm.
When is it okay to risk psychological harm?
Most universities have ethics review boards to answer one crucial question: When is it okay to risk psychological harm in the name of science? Ethics review boards were developed as a result of some controversial psychological experiments in the middle of the last century.
May 1962. An experiment was being conducted at Yale University, where Dr. Stanley Milgram tested how far subjects would go in obeying authority, even if they believed they were physically hurting someone. The test was something where people had to punish someone by physically hurting someone by electrocuting them. One theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake.
No one was actually being electrocuted, and the screams of the shock victim were fake, but the trauma that the participants suffered was very real. This sparked controversy within the scientific community. Many questioned Milgram’s methodology. That’s why now we have ethics review boards.
The ethics review boards look for the reasons that this is why it’s important. It’s not just basic theoretical research. This has direct implications for mass transit, direct implications. It’s a risk-benefit, but the benefits are potentially tremendous.
