The problem isn't that it isn't fast, or cheap but that it's currently in a legal limbo. So if someone orders certain medications using that automated system, it'll get logged and probably be denied to reduce legal exposure to the company.
Afterwards, law enforcement could get a court order to release those logs if the judge deems the "crime" is severe enough.
This seems more like an ethical, philosopical, or even an legal issue. I doubt it can be resolved by using automation.
I guess you can put some tape over the warning light :)
In case they use a bit of force on the gas pedal, you can push slightly harder to override it. Depending how it's implemented and how good it works, I think the bit of push back of gas pedal is good idea. Then I can avoid looking at the dash to check my speed. If it's unreliable, I guess they'll probably opt for a warning light instead.
If you factor in the legal implications, the trolley problem becomes trivial. Do nothing. I'm not qualified nor allowed to operate train infrastructure and the legal consequences will become worse if someone dies because of something I did.
The crux of the dilemma is that there are two solutions. If there aren't two then it's a lemma and the trolley problem is solved.
I didn't introduce the convoluted idea of there being train tracks and a switch. If it was purely hypothetical, you could've asked: "Would you prefer to let 5 people die or let 1 die"
Here's another hypothetical:
"A train is on a track and you are standing on bridge above it. You spot a couple of kilometers further down the track 5 people who are going to be run over by the train. Do you push someone standing beside you over the edge and onto the tracks so the train will register a collision and stops in order to save those 5 people?"
This is the exact same scenario. Only instead of pulling a lever, you have a human interaction. The percentages of who would kill that 1 person change when the trolley dilemma is asked in that way.
If we're getting to the crux of the problem, then why does the response change when you provide the exact same scenario but replace the mechanical with a human-to-human interaction?
I don't see how that trivializes the problem. With that additional consideration, the options are:
1. Let 5 people die and 1 live, and you probably don't have any legal consequences.
2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail.
So the thing that made the answer trivial was the introduction of legal consequences that affect you personally? Doesn't the difference of 4 deaths dwarf that?
No, it doesn't. How I look at it is those (legal) rules weren't made randomly. I don't think it's an option for me to overrule what millions of people have decided on over the course of a couple of centuries. Especially if I only have a couple of seconds to think about all the implications of my action.
The calculation for me would change if there was a choice between killing 5 people and potentially killing nobody. But that's not the hypothetical here.
If those rules needs to be changed, then change them through debate and well reasoned arguments and not a split second decision. The "good samaritan" law is an example of this. If perform CPR on someone who's heart has stopped, they can't sue you if you save their life but cracked some ribs.
> I don't think it's an option for me to overrule what millions of people have decided on over the course of a couple of centuries. Especially if I only have a couple of seconds to think about all the implications of my action.
I find it bizarre that you're taking the side of the, say, thousands of transit policymakers--who are certainly not taking this hypothetical into account--over the majority vote of the public on this exact ethical issue. Not wanting to reason from scratch in the moment is fine, but you don't have to. This is a well-known dilemma, and the consensus is that you should kill one to save five.
> If those rules needs to be changed, then change them through debate and well reasoned arguments and not a split second decision.
Yep, that's why we're here. Now that most of us have agreed that "pull the lever" is the right call on the trolley problem, do you think the transit authorities are going to codify it as a law? Don't be ridiculous. Just take the legal hit, if it even comes. Laws are wrong sometimes, especially in hypotheticals.
I would never criticise someone for making the decision to pull the lever. I understand that decision, I really do. I only said I wouldn't do it and explained why.
It's not as clear cut as you think it is. If you think it is, then write to a philosophy professor and say you've solved the trolley dilemma through an internet vote. I hope this sounds absurd to you.
You can play with numbers, but if I were to pull the lever, I would feel I would kill someone for the sole reason they were in the minority. Which is an extra reason for me not to do it.
> I would never criticise someone for making the decision to pull the lever. I understand that decision, I really do. I only said I wouldn't do it and explained why.
And I wouldn't critcise someone for not pulling the lever... unless the primary reason they didn't pull the lever was the legal consequences they would suffer. That's a terrible reason.
You have no problem when someone decides to kill someone and thinks the laws doesn't apply to them. To make matters worse, you think someone who tries to obey the laws makes a terrible decision by not killing anyone.
If killing someone doesn't give you a pause, I would be afraid to be a minority in whatever society you live in. The laws, which you so easily dismissed, gives some rights to minorities.
What's next? Here are five people who are dying... Let's kill someone in the minority to get their organs and transplant them. It's ok! Five people will survive, while only one dies.
Laws, whether or not you like them, are there to also protect minorities.
> You have no problem when someone decides to kill someone and thinks the laws doesn't apply to them.
This is the most dramatic mischaracterization I've read in recent memory. Who has "no problem" with either outcome of the trolley problem? "Oh, one person died? No problem!" Did you consider how strawmannish that sounded before you wrote it? And as for the law "not applying", that's not part of the conversation either. The law will certainly apply, as it must to preserve societal order. But the pragmatic application of the written law is not always aligned with what is right, and when multiple lives are at stake, the legal consequences themselves are not especially, well, consequential.
Take this euthanasia hypothetical as another example of the point I'm making:
Your spouse is experiencing horrific, constant, neurological pain. It is a given that they will die in the next 48 hours. The only treatment available to you is ineffective at treating the pain, but at high doses it will cause immediate death. Your partner is aware of the situation and has requested euthanasia. Do you euthanize them?
It's a highly contrived situation, but then so is the trolley problem. I believe that people should have an opinion on this problem that is not swayed much by the possibility of legal consequences to themselves. The consequences either way are so incredibly dire that the opinion of some disinterested court referencing a law that was absolutely not written with this situation in mind should be practically ignored. If somebody said to me that they would have euthanized their spouse if the law in their state hadn't said they couldn't, but since it did say that they just watched them suffer, then I'd say that person is a coward. I'm not saying they should have done it and then tried to avoid the legal consequences, I'm saying they should have done it and then accepted the legal consequences, because the consequences to the other party are so much more drastic.
That's all I'm saying about the trolley problem. If you believe in switch-pulling the trolley problem, you should switch pull without considering your local laws, or how much you could spend on a lawyer. If you don't believe in switch-pulling that's fine as well, unless you are somebody who actually does think switch-pulling is the right thing to do but not if there are legal consequences to yourself. Again, that's a terrible reason. Believe one way or the other and act on that. Don't outsource your morality to the legislators when you're faced with a once-in-a-lifetime moral dilemma where people are guaranteed to die at the end.
> 2. Save 5 people, cause the death of 1, and you probably go to jail.
You'll be prosecuted for sure, but if the death of the 5 was certain unless you acted, I'd be pretty surprised if you were found guilty, let alone being jailed.
You're implying that you'd go to jail for the lives of 4 people (or that people should), but recent experience has shown people won't even wear a mask to save other people's lives.
Yes, people are shitty utilitarians. I can think of a thousand equally egregious examples that we're both guilty of. Doesn't mean we wouldn't be good people when presented with a social situation that our culture and instincts actually prepared us for.
Think about how many people have sacrificed themselves for others. Not just jail time, but death. Would each of those people have lived completely pure, selfless lives if they hadn't done what they did? Probably not. Who knows, some might have ended up being anti-maskers. It is said that "dying is easy". Making one clearly right choice, damn the extreme consequences, is actually very normal for humans. Just as normal as spending a whole life making bad decisions. Even more bizarre is the two "modes" aren't even mutually exclusive.
Is there any proof wearing a mask save ANY lives? People talk about this as if it were some fact, it's usually same people believing safe and effective vaccines, who quickly forgot vaccines were supposed to stop transmission, stop symptoms, they just keep pushing goal posts, while reality if you look at stats in highly vaxxed countries is that vaccines do really nothing anymore.
You spread a lot less virus if you wear a mask. Cheap masks don't protect you, but they do protect others from you. Countries where everybody immediately wore masks had far less cases than those where a lot of people didn't. The whole mask issue was the ultimate test in altruism: do you accept slight inconvenience that might save other people's lives? A lot of people failed.
Masks work only in the lab when worn PROPERLY at ALL ocassions, never meeting strangers without mask, good luck with that. In real life people have to eat without mask and they won't wear it at home or often in work etc. or they don't wear them properly anyway with gaps around.
So yeah, masks work in theory, but reality shown us they are completely useless, especially with newer more infectious variants. If they were such great invention we would not have flu and other respiratory viruses, in the end everyone will get infected anyway.
They are only useless when half the people don't use them and ignore all other measures while they're at it. Obviously there's no need to wear it at home; that's just stupid. But outside, in public space, it catches a lot of those particles that can carry the virus. If everybody wears one, that means less virus particles in the air, and less chance of infection.
And during the pandemic, a lot of countries did indeed not have their usual flu season.
Numbers of vaxxed vs unvaxxed hospitalized (per capita in same group) don't confirm this disinformation spread by pharma companies and their paid politicians.
Page 5, new hospitalizations, 7 day numbers per 100K people in each group
June 2022
unvaxxed 1.4/100K
vaxxed unfinished 1.3/100K
vaxxed 2 doses 0.5/100K
vaxxed with booster 1.7/100K
To be fair most of these people are hospitalized for other reason than COVID regardless their vaccination as was always the case even when they were spreading propaganda about hospitalized unvaxxed. Numbers in ICU look better for vaxxed, but there are way too many factors to consider, you are more likely to have better life style as vaxxed risk group than unvaxxed risk group, which doesn't really say vaccination works.
"Nothing" would be my choice regardless, morally and philosophically. In each case you'd likely be sued by the person(s) you'd kill and they'd probably win.
If you don't intervene circumstances play out and you are blameless. In the other case you are choosing to kill someone, taking their life based on an idea in your head which may or may not be valid. In reality nothing is so clear cut and the people at risk may not have died anyway and you may kill someone needlessly.
That is not to say I wouldn't, for instance, defend someone being attacked. In that case I'm not causing someone else's death by my actions. If the attacker dies during my defense that's fine because it's due to his actions, not mine.
It's not trivial, dunno about US, but in many (developed) countries around world not providing help to someone (passing around car crash without stopping, if you don't see anyone providing help) has legal implications.
When you are certain your actions will result in the death of someone then I doubt the legal protections of helping someone is as clear cut as you think it is.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know all laws of all countries.
The question is whether they have enough data to provide to law enforcement if one their users underwent an abortion. If they aren't collecting enough data to determine this then they could just state: "we can't and therefor we won't"
It's a huge red flag if corps think they have enough data about their users that they think they can provide this data.
edit: I'm not talking about social media where people might explicitly say this.
We have already seen law enforcement ask for identification of users and other data of all phones in the vicinity of a crime. It's not a leap to imagine them asking for this same data using a geofence around providers and using that to obtain search history, communications, or other records
Then I can't comment on this. I don't live in the US nor know what it is like.
I was responding to this from an 'EU' perspective. For the tech companies who do bussiness globally, my objection still stands. In the country I'm living in, the data collected to determine whether someone is pregnant or had an abortion, is data collected beyond what they should be collecting to provide their service.
I have no idea why a company who provides: email, vpn, search, etc... should be able to figure out users health data.
They probably shouldn't have access to any personal information in an ideal world. But they gather as much info as possible to sell advertising and pay for the service. At least here in the US there have been well know cases where someone starts receiving pregnancy related ads before they even know they're pregnant, just based on other data/activities that are correlated to becoming pregnant.
I think you're confused because you heard a lot of different goals of the sanctions.
For me, the sanctions aren't about stopping the current war, but about stopping future wars.
In your analogy...
Rusty doesn't know how to make a baseball bat. We supplied rusty with baseball bats because we thought he would use it to play baseball games. Instead he used it to threaten his class mates. We took that supply of baseball bats away from him because we can and don't want him to threaten Suzy like he did with Ursula. It doesn't matter to me what Rusty wants to trade to get those bats.
I don't supply bats or anything that can be traded to bats to Rusty in order to protect Suzy and I'll give Ursula whatever she needs to protect herself.
This is all fine and dandy, and I'm sure everyone means well, but it still doesn't explain why I'm the one left without money, or why I'm expected to be blaming "Rusty" instead of "Amanda" who actually took the money he left me.
It's more like "Dear George, thank you for donating this money to our cause that I'm sure you agree with or else. Sincerely Amanda."
Not sure how I'd feel about that, regardless of how I feel about Ursula, Suzy, Natalie, Faye, Denise, Izzie, Romina, Molly, Trudy, or any of the girls in my class.
If you're talking about inflation, we had a multi-year pandemic in which the western governments gave aid to struggling businesses, inoculated their population for free, supply chains were severaly disrupted, etc...
The war in Ukraine didn't cause the inflation (I think), although I admit it probably made it worse. I think it was the other way around. The prospect of inflation caused the war in Ukraine. Russia thought with all the challenges we would face, we wouldn't react to an invasion in Ukraine.
I'm not an expert in macro economics, so do you think there wouldn't be an inflation if Russia didn't invade Ukraine?
I hope nobody takes your idea seriously. Most people aren't super-spies who can go undercover and save society from a cult. Just go to law enforcement, report it and listen to what they have to say.
There once was a professor doing research on cults who sent out his grad students to secretly embed themselves in various cults and report on them. Not all of them came back.. And now we get learn about why that was a bad idea in the ethics portion of psychology classes! Yay!
The US and any time before the 2000s. Sorry I can't be of more help than that. It was only a brief but very memorable mention in a lecture many years ago. I did just try searching for it online but there is a ton of cult related content online. More than I ever imagined. Also it's not like the researchers were exposed and murdered dramatically, rather that some just ended up joining and staying with the cults.
Please don't do that. It goes directly against the HN guidelines[1] and makes the site less pleasant for everybody.
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
I was referencing the common misconception of evolution being a force with a goal of making organisms better. So the person wasn't a force returning the notebook, the notebook just happened to be fit enough to be returned in this situation.
I don't see how content policy, adhering to privacy regulations, etc... would be different when there's facebook person or an ex-cia person.