The charity problem is also unimaginably complex. What if I donate my entire (literal) life savings...then lose my job, go homeless, and consequently die? I've thus saved a handful of lives, lost one (myself), and doomed maybe dozens or hundreds of other lives I could've later saved! Uh, whoops. :|
Every moment, every (in)decision you make comes at the opportunity cost of many other choices, and their exponentially multiplying secondary/tertiary/etc consequences.
These thought experiments feels like (#0) solving an optimization math problem where you're:
1. Stumbling through an unimaginably large solution space and
2. Latching onto local minima (heuristics like "choose the fewest trolley deaths"), which are probably bad answers, only to realize
3. We don't even precisely know the objective function we're optimizing. So the problem has gone "up" one level. We first need to solve that optimization problem. GOTO #0.
The whole thing feels farcically hopeless and is maybe even a recursive or self referential minefield. Yikes. So the idea of avoiding it entirely by just winging it through life using your gut, or checking out entirely, doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Hell, it might be the only way to keep your sanity. It's an unsatisfying heuristic, but...oh look, we're back at step #2... :))))))
Every moment, every (in)decision you make comes at the opportunity cost of many other choices, and their exponentially multiplying secondary/tertiary/etc consequences.
These thought experiments feels like (#0) solving an optimization math problem where you're:
1. Stumbling through an unimaginably large solution space and
2. Latching onto local minima (heuristics like "choose the fewest trolley deaths"), which are probably bad answers, only to realize
3. We don't even precisely know the objective function we're optimizing. So the problem has gone "up" one level. We first need to solve that optimization problem. GOTO #0.
The whole thing feels farcically hopeless and is maybe even a recursive or self referential minefield. Yikes. So the idea of avoiding it entirely by just winging it through life using your gut, or checking out entirely, doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Hell, it might be the only way to keep your sanity. It's an unsatisfying heuristic, but...oh look, we're back at step #2... :))))))