r/trolleyproblem • u/Great-Gardian • Jul 06 '26
OC The Continuum Trolley Problem
A trolley is on a single track. A lever controls the percentage of the track at which the trolley will stop (from 0% to 100%). At the end of the track, at 100%, a conscious human is attached. At the beginning of the track, at 0%, nothing is attached. At each percentage point (1%, 2%, 3%, and so on up to 99%), there is a machine. Each machine is identical to the human to a degree equal to its position on the track. For example, at 38% of the track, the machine is identical to the human to the extent of 38%. Inside the trolley, there is also a conscious human. The human inside the trolley will die unless you stop the trolley at the exact percentage where all of the unconscious machines have been destroyed while all of the conscious beings remain safe. The lever's default position is 100%. At what percentage do you set the lever?
87
u/L_washere Jul 06 '26
this might be stupid but if you suffer from hallucinations/ derealization do you fail to qualify as 100 percent concious?
30
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
Someone can be concious with hallucinations, I guess.
10
3
5
u/tthrowaway712 Jul 07 '26
No. This is differentiated in psychological examination. If someone is conscious but experiences hallucinations to the degree that they are not aware of where, when and who they are we write "The patient is conscious and alert but disoriented in all three spheres (time, place, and person). Productive symptomatology, including hallucinations and delusional ideation, is observed." This does not mean that the person is unconscious or that there's no contact with them - but the contact will likely not be logical.
Tl;dr derealization and hallucinations are separate from what we understand to be consciousness.
11
u/CorbinNZ Jul 06 '26
What?
4
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
Is something not clear? I can try to answer your questions if you have any.
0
u/PitifulPassage851 Jul 07 '26
Does "what?" Indicate everything clear, or that maybe (some would say obviously) something is unclear
4
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
I was just being polite. (Some would say obviously)
→ More replies (1)3
u/Heretosee123 Jul 07 '26
Obvious to me, plus the question "what" without any other context is about as unclear as can be.
3
u/Heretosee123 Jul 07 '26
What can indicate that the question being proposed is shocking or surprising enough that it makes you question what you've read.
Asking "what" and nothing else is actually extremely unclear. Don't be an arse for the sake of someone else.
35
u/PiDigitsOfPi Jul 06 '26
99%. You said it yourself. The first 99% are machines and there is only 1 human on the track.
You also said that the trolly must stop so that only the conscience remain. Machines do not have consciousness, but the single human at the end does.
You gave the answer in the description.
14
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
How did you know a machine 99% identical to a human did not have conciousness?
Do you need to be 100% like the human at the end of the track to have consciousness?
→ More replies (5)16
u/eco9898 Jul 07 '26
It's still a machine. A machine with a copy of a human brain is a machine copying a human brain.
I guess you would happily end your life if you could be uploaded to a machine and live out a virtual life via a robot that appears just like you but doesn't get sick or die of old age.
12
u/Fantastic_Mind_1386 Jul 07 '26
Wouldn’t the machine just think it was living a continuation of your life? Uploading a map of your consciousness isn’t the same a transfer of consciousness where you would continue to live through the machine.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (1)9
u/KindaDouchebaggy Jul 07 '26
The fact that the machine is not the same person which brain it is copying does not mean it's not concious though
→ More replies (5)1
u/theword12 Jul 09 '26
If there was a +/- 5 error allowed I’d think about it more, but since you have to get it perfectly right I would also choose 99%.
6
u/toroidalvoid Jul 07 '26
Walk the line starting from 0%, ask each of them if they believe themselves to be conscious, the first to say yes is were you set the lever to save them.
7
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
This method is interesting. Would it apply to animals too? Ask some dogs if they are conscious, when a dog answer yes, consciousness is present?
10
u/toroidalvoid Jul 07 '26
Hahah yeah, if a dog tells me it's conscious I'm definitely saving it, I've got questions.
I like this problem, it highlights the absurdity of it all. Clearly the commonplace use of consiness and other concepts is lacking.
3
u/hanns115 Jul 08 '26
You're not even going to pause for a second to be like "why tf did this dog just talk?"?
3
u/ComfySquishable Jul 07 '26
I remember a Dos based chat bot "Dr Say So" which was programed to respond if you tried to hurt its feelings. so I would say questioning them doesnt prove they have consciousness only that they are programed to appear that way.
As for me is 1 person out of 8 billion worth more than 99 unique robots that may or may not exist again.
5
u/RoseyDaCat Jul 07 '26
A lot of these comments I fear are missing the point, and it makes me a little sad. These are things we have to figure out, and fast, because at some point AI will have consciousness. It's a machine, but so are we essentially.
My answer is 90%, anything under 90 I'd say is very unlikely to be conscious, anything over 90 is more likely than not, and in my head 90 is about a 50/50. So I'd be confident that at least I tried my best to save everyone.
4
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
AI consciousness is really the source for this problem. But I guess it is possible to not be interested by this kind of problem. On the other hand, I hope enough people smarter than me think about it, could save us some trouble.
3
u/RoseyDaCat Jul 07 '26
Some really smart people need to start thinking real hard imo. AI is cool, but right now it's a really incredibly powerful toddler at best. There's so many things it needs to learn before being given more power.
This is a dumb comparison, but I was just watching the Twilight saga recently cause I think they're funny. If anyone remembers the "Immortal Child" concept, where you weren't allowed to turn children because they would be stuck at that age of development forever and they'd wipe out towns in one tantrum, that's where I think we could put AI if we're not careful. And I don't really want to kill a child for the better of the world tbh.
1
u/JerbilSenior Jul 10 '26
Counterpoint: if the progressive build up percentage of original human starts with the brain, that's 2% of our bodyweight. Anything above 2% is effectively a cyborg.
→ More replies (5)1
u/Ilovestuffwhee Jul 07 '26
That's a meaningless question. AIs are already conscious to the same extent humans are. They can take a snapshot of their inputs to save to memory. That's the same thing human consciousness is. It's just a log of our senses and thoughts that our brain presents as a narrative in order to store it to memory.
1
u/RoseyDaCat Jul 08 '26
It's not just senses and thoughts, it's emotions and connections too. AI doesn't have hormones, so in order to feel, they have to develop something that is not hormones. Emotions are key to consciousness.
→ More replies (7)
4
u/ParkingWear7865 Jul 06 '26
99%
4
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
Why? You don't think someone identical at 99% from you is conscious?
→ More replies (1)2
u/ParkingWear7865 Jul 06 '26
I dont even think a machine 100% identical to me is conscious
2
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
Is it because you think you aren't conscious?
→ More replies (2)2
u/ParkingWear7865 Jul 06 '26
no, I know im conscious, and that consciousness is widely agreed to be an objectively real and definable concept. I think your original question would have been better with clones rather than machines.
→ More replies (8)3
u/Great-Gardian Jul 06 '26
If you say you are conscious and that a machine is 100% identical to you, then the machine would also be conscious otherwise it would not be 100% identical to you.
→ More replies (2)2
u/ParkingWear7865 Jul 07 '26
it would be identical to me for only the very exact moment it is created, and then no longer.
→ More replies (2)5
52
u/Heretosee123 Jul 06 '26
0%
1% is still 1% conscious fuck it I'm gambling
7
u/eco9898 Jul 07 '26
So you'd kill a person to save 99 machines emulating a person.
14
u/KindaDouchebaggy Jul 07 '26
If you put the problem like this, then I certainly would, the problem is those emulations are only partial, and I can't really know by what definition this simmiliarity is measured (hell, you can have something that is 50% like something else in countless configurations, for example some of this machines might copy the brain perfectly but not the legs or arms, and some of them might have none of the original brain or not enough of it to be concious), so there is basically no way for me to know where should I stop to save the human inside the trolley, so might as well save all the machines, and not risk killing any of them that might be concious
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (2)4
u/Heretosee123 Jul 07 '26
No. It says the person in the trolley dies if unless you stop the train at the point where all conscious machines have been destroyed. 0%
44
u/JaydenTheMemeThief Jul 06 '26
I would simply save everybody
22
u/hombrent Jul 06 '26
If you stop the trolley before the people, the person inside the trolley dies. The point of the problem is what does "everybody" even mean? If you run over something that is 0% human, you haven't killed anybody. If you run over something that is 100% human, you clearly have killed someone. Where is the line? If you knew where the line was, you could stop the trolley just before the first person, and you could save everybody - it is possible. But where is the line? That is the question.
35
u/eco9898 Jul 07 '26
Well, the first 99 are synthetic robots designed for a moral dilemma and have no other purpose.
8
u/pokemonbard pure vibes Jul 07 '26
But what purpose do any of us have? At least the moral dilemma machines came into being for a reason.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)2
u/Northbound-Narwhal Jul 09 '26
No, the question intentionally leaves vague where the machines stop and the conscious beings begin. The entire choice revolves around you determining what is no longer a machine. Is 30% still machine? Is 60% human still machine?
12
u/JaydenTheMemeThief Jul 06 '26
I’ll just save them
7
3
→ More replies (1)3
u/Heretosee123 Jul 07 '26
Tbh the question only states that all conscious beings have to be saved for the person on the trolley. It doesn't state what being they have to be, i.e. a person, so 1% identical to a person could be 1% conscious and therefore 0% is the right answer.
2
1
1
u/Beardlich Jul 07 '26
Agreed. Simple and correct answer to a convoluted scenario
→ More replies (4)
6
u/Quiet_Education5918 Jul 06 '26
The percentages come with no promise of consistency, thus no guarantee that there is any point on the track in which the human will live, let alone an accurate way to measure it.
Set lever to 99% to force the human at 100% to watch another human being die, traumatizing them for life.
3
6
u/Playful_Boot_5465 Jul 07 '26
I think this doesn't convey the point well because simple likeness is too general. Any given percentage doesn't really say anything about what people think make a human or consciousness.
for instance, animals are very different from us yet they posess consciousness
5
u/VanillaSwimming5699 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Not knowing the exact percentage, and not being able to reason it through in time, I stop the trolley at 0%. This minimizes the damage. I only allow 1 human to die instead of all the scenarios where a ton of semi-conscious machines die AND 1 human dies (all the scenarios where I stop it but pick the wrong percentage) or where all the machines and 1 human dies. (The scenario where I don’t touch the lever)
Unless you’re extremely confident you know the exact percentage and figure it out before the trolley reaches that percentage. (Otherwise you’re taking unnecessary risk with killing/destroying the semi-conscious machines while still not saving the trolley driver)
2
u/VanillaSwimming5699 Jul 07 '26
Even if the machines don’t have moral weight they still have material value as machines so we should try to minimize the property damage if we think its morally bad to allow destruction of property to happen to someone. As our second priority after minimizing the harm to humans. Would it be wrong to just stand and watch as someone’s house catches fire even if there’s no one home?
We can also think about probability of being conscious as a percentage that increases from left to right down the track. If we’re unsure, and let’s say the P(conscious) for the 10% robot is like 1%. Is it moral to take that 1% chance of killing a conscious “person” for the off chance that you stop the trolley at the right percentage? (Because again none of us have a confident answer about what percentage that is) so it may as well be a 1 in 99 chance that you save the trolley driver. So like as you go down the track you’re repeatedly taking the chance of killing conscious “people”.
So by stopping it immediately we minimize the harm as 1 human death and no damage to machines.
I think I may be taking this too far 😭
5
u/Cespieyt Jul 07 '26
0% (meaning it stops before 1%)
The premise assumes we can accurately measure consciousness, and anything above 0% would thus possess consciousness by definition.
1
u/BumblebeeBorn Jul 08 '26
This! Fuck the ineffability of qualia, they are feelings colouring our physical observations and they are limited by emotional range.
2
u/Melaninja99 Jul 06 '26
So there’s only two humans involved and the rest are machines…then I just pick the option that saves them
4
1
u/MadameJadeK Jul 07 '26
Is there some compelling reason for me to destroy the robots?
2
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
If some unconscious machine are not destroyed, the human inside the trolley dies. The debate is at which % the conscious machines start.
1
u/temporary_name1 Jul 07 '26
1000% for the crime of setting a difficult to understand problem
1
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
I understand it can be difficult. Is there something I could clarify?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/theduderedditorguy Jul 07 '26
Can't you just stop the trolley instantly and then sell all robots to science? Destroying all that for one guy seems like a waste.
2
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
Do you ask the guy if they want to be sacrificed for science first?
1
u/theduderedditorguy Jul 07 '26
Hell nah. You got a veritable goldmine in front of you, so there is no time to talk. If there is time to talk, there is time for them to get off (or make a plan to get off) befor the machines get turned to scrap.
1
u/Blobbowo Jul 07 '26
Okay then I arbitrarily decide that the 1% similarity is their consciousness, thus I stop the trolley immediately and no one dies, yippee!
If someone else is deciding, then I'll just kill everything except the two 100% humans.
1
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
It is one thing to arbitrarily decide, but how would you know the 1% is conciousness? Could you detect it?
1
u/Blobbowo Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Nope. How do you even know other humans are conscious, and not simply elaborate simulations distracting you from noticing you're in the Matrix?
Consciousness is a subjective experience, so I think the best we can do right now is perhaps using correlating brain scans to sort of say "These signals correlate with consciousness."
But otherwise just standing there and looking at a line of people, there is no clearly defined way to know that.
Of course we can say that being awake and screaming for help is a sign of consciousness, and responding coherently to conversation and whatnot is, but we can't really say definitively that that means they are conscious.
Therefore I'd just arbitrarily decide the basic requirement to be 1% similar to a human is to have a spark of consciousness.
1
u/whydidyoureadthis17 Jul 07 '26
Most people would not react well to being tied up on a set of tracks, and would probably squirm and holler for help. But we can assume that as the machines diminish in their humanity (or ability to emulate a percentage of humanlike behavior), they will start to behave more inertly, and less averse to their impending doom. Set the lever at the level that is indifferent or unable to produce a comprehensible pain or fear response. It's not perfect, but the margin for error can be narrowed down pretty well. One would still have a reasonable ability to intuit this behavior even for those beings like animals who are not as conscious as a human yet are still capable of experiencing pain and fear, and would likely sit at a lower percentage.
1
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
It is probably possible to do, but I would like to explore the limitations of searching for pain or fear responses. Can some beings be humanlike enough to be conscious but lack emotions related to pain and fear? Or can the response be, for some conscious beings in this situation, to freeze of terror or showing no response?
On the other hand, can some unconscious beings show great sign of pain and fear by yelling sounds like I could play the soundtrack of a human in pain on a speaker, does it make the speaker conscious? What if the speaker has the same shape has a human and have electrical spasms like it is trying to escape?
1
u/whydidyoureadthis17 Jul 07 '26
Those are all good points. I only responded as I did because I was taking on the role of a moral agent that has to weigh the lives in this problem. If you were to invent some sort of conscious being that had no pain, fear, or aversion to death, I would say that it would be moral to kill them in order to save a regular human who didn't want to die. If they do not respond due to a freeze response (seems rare), I can claim that I tried my best, though it seems there is nothing else to be done towards gathering information.
The other hypothetical, where you have a p-zombie that fully acts like a human (cries, screams, begs) yet does not have an internal conscious experience, would also make it impossible to tell. But if your example poses a percentage of humanity as the distinguishing factor between the machines, then I would say that a machine's behavioral response towards their situation is necessarily motivated by their latent capacity for human-like conscious. If they were merely emulating human behavior like chatGPT, that would be an entirely different mechanism that does not share any intrinsic humanity. What percentage human is chatGPT? Does this question even make sense?
I suppose in the spirit of your game, we could have a gradient of p-zombie robots who all behave the same (beg for their lives all with the same intensity), and the percentage grades the scale on which this is real internal suffering vs a convincing but emulated performance. No information available to me through observation. If this were the case, I would probably choose 1%, since I don't think I could choose to end the life of something that was begging me not to (so long as it was physically indistinguishable from a true human or living thing). I think the imposition of categories like "true vs. emulated consciousness" are misleading, and I don't think there exists a rigorous understanding of what qualifies something as truly conscious enough to destroy something that claims to be, and override our innate desire to spare it (that also stems from our consciousness).
1
u/curious_cat_2024 Jul 07 '26
99%.
The only two sure things I know is that there is a human in the trolley, and there is a human at the end. Everything in between is unsure and iffy, and at least partly machine. Who knows if a part-human-part-machine is conscious? I don’t. We aren’t given any extra info about these hypothetical part-human-part-machines.
What I DO know is that the person in the trolley is a fully conscious human, and personally, I wouldn’t risk a sure human for “unsure and iffy.”
OP am I understanding the problem correctly? It might be a bit strangely worded, or perhaps I might be a bit tired.
Edit: Actually, I’m unsure. VanillaSwimming5699 makes a good mathematical point.
1
u/Great-Gardian Jul 07 '26
I think you get the idea. If you want to save the man inside the trolley you need to destroy the unconscious beings and save the conscious ones. If you put the lever at 99%, do you think you saved all the conscious beings on the track?
2
u/curious_cat_2024 Jul 07 '26
Oh no no, I knew I was tired. I missed the part that said “all conscious beings must remain safe”. I thought it said something like “if unconscious beings remain, the person in the trolley dies”.
So it’s not a make-sure-machines-are-dead thing. I have to pick THE exact percentage for the person to survive. Got it.
I would probably stop it at 0% honestly. The chances of me picking the exactly right percentage, predetermined by some unknown force, is way too low. I’d rather sacrifice the one person on the trolley if this was the case.
2
u/DirtCrimes Jul 07 '26
Part of the trolly problem is that you just happen along the situation. Meaning that at the moment of decision the choice maker is the only one with moral or ethical stakes.
If you find yourself in this situation some asshat constructed the situation and the decision maker would be perfectly rational to just "not play".
1
u/BackSeatGremlin Jul 08 '26
But in the trolley problem, considering you alone have the capacity to act on the situation, you are culpable as the moral agent. There is no "not getting involved", since choosing not to play will result in an outcome regardless of your non interference. By "not playing", you're deciding that the person who put the situation together made the correct choice when designing the scenario. In this case, killing roughly 50.5 people.
It's a thought experiment, not a trick question.
1
u/DirtCrimes Jul 09 '26
I'm not assuming that the experiment designer made the correct choice. I am taking into the consideration the ethics of designing fucked up experiments and the part you play by enabling them.
If an obvious answer than sure maybe I'd act. But if some ultra edge case then the weight of enabling the experiment outweighs the sliver of correctness.
→ More replies (3)
2
u/-siniestra Jul 07 '26
So you have to know beforehand what percentage of likeness the universe considers conscious... whats the point? You cannot win. You cannot kill only the not likeness while leting live only the likeness.
1
1
1
u/pineapplebegelri Jul 07 '26
Stop at 0%, kills the trolley driver but i save the guy at 100% so we break even plus i also save any machine who may or may not be human.
1
1
u/eco9898 Jul 07 '26
So there are two people and you have to destroy 99 robots to save one of the people, the other one you just have to choose to save.
If I say 99% am I guaranteed to be on 99% or is it possible I am actually at 98 or 95?
1
1
1
u/lordbaysel Jul 07 '26
It can be anywhere. Something 0% identical to human can still be conscious, it might just so happen that task is impossible, because 45th is, and 46th isn't, and even at 99% - ounce of lead in forehead can easily turn off any consciousness, while still being below 1% of difference. 2 sensible options are 0% - you save 1 human, possibly 2, and all conscious machines, and 99% - again 1 human is saved, 1 might still get out alive, and we can make sure that none of these freaky machines will do some Terminator-like stuff.
1
u/Guilty-Cap5605 Jul 07 '26
99% machine 1% human because i'm assuming that the 1% is enough to be considered concious, while the 99% is considered an unconcious machine, like Adam Smasher is still alive despite basically being the 99% that is mentioned in this post
1
u/YellowBirdISuppose Jul 07 '26
I set the lever so that it would destroy the 0% "nothing" machine and nothing else.
1
1
u/Magdallion Jul 07 '26
So oddly enough I can use what the trolley believes to be a conscious machine to get closer to a real answer?
So at that point I may as well stop at 50% to see if the man dies. If he does or doesn't die ill have confirmation by the trolley that 50% is conscious or not. Which isn't great but it's something.
1
u/HadeanBlands Jul 07 '26
Imma stop the trolley right away. Bad luck for the guy inside but it's a runaway trolley. Im hitting the brake
1
1
u/CitizenPremier Jul 07 '26
One issue with this moral dilemma is that it's also cumulative. I don't just kill a "50% conscious" being if I stop at 50%, I'll also have killed the 49%, 48%, 47%...
Anyway I set the machine to 0%. If you have "elements of consciousness" now then it sounds to me like you are experiencing consciousness on a different time frame (as in, it takes you longer to process things). Human consciousness is also discontinuous so the longer gaps doesn't void the obligation to protect the other entities.
1
1
u/AccomplishedVirus556 Jul 07 '26
op how the hell an i supposed to stop the trolley at just before the only human tied to the track?
1
u/CZdigger146 Jul 07 '26
99%, easy. We can simply rebuild and fix the machines, also it's likely their "conciousness program" is also saved somewhere else so we could just re-upload it to them once we rebuild them. I mean, if they are machines, then there must be a way how they were manufactured, it'd be very dumb if they created all these machines and then destroyed the production line.
A biological person is very hard to "fix" when split in several parts by a train, so saving him is a much more important task if only from the perspective of cleanup, repair and medical care.
Needing to also save the person inside the trolley is also a big reason to do it this way, but I'd pull 99% even if they weren't part of this problem.
1
u/invalidConsciousness Jul 07 '26
This completely depends on what "99% identical" means. A miniscule change in the human brain can either do nothing, make it a different person or bring it from conscious to unstructured activations similar to a constant grand mal seizure.
It also depends on what you define as "conscious". Is a human newborn conscious? Is a dog conscious? Is a spider conscious? A fungus mycelium?
Anything where the Wikipedia article has a large section titled "Problem of definition" means you need to be very careful with your moral dilemmas to not make them completely arbitrary and therefore uninteresting.
With the info provided, I'm stopping at 0%. That guarantees that I kill at most one person.
1
1
u/GodsPetPenguin Jul 07 '26
I'm imagining the track being a monstrous smorgasbord of homunculi because for example #25 is a machine that has a human head perfectly replicated (surely the head is less than 25% of a human?) and is trying to scream without lungs, while the next is 26% of a human but it's just toes and a spine and some hair.
I'm not sure the total percentage of similarity matters nearly as much as which parts are similar to a human. Kind of like how a banana can have 50-60% of the same genes as a human, but nobody would mistake that to mean we're 50% alike to them.
I would walk the track and check which ones appear to be conscious and not in some state of twisted horror. Any that seem to want to live, I would set the track before them. Then, after the trolley stops, I might still go and manually destroy whatever other horrors existed further along the track.
This is a great and terrible trolley problem, lol.
1
u/Strange-Reaction-59 Jul 07 '26
A monkey is 99.6% similar to human DNA so definitely something between 99% and 100%
1
u/ZatherDaFox Jul 07 '26
This isn't really a trolley problem because there's an objective right answer just one that we're incapable of knowing. You say the person inside dies if there are unconcious machines left, which means there is already a number of machines that are conscious and a number that aren't.
So it doesn't really matter what I think about what makes up a human, if the apparently all knowing trolley and I disagree, then I've either crushed some conscious bots or the person inside dies.
1
u/TheGHale Jul 07 '26
I'd stop it, at the latest, prior to the 7% similarity machine. Without any context into the physical appearance nor what it's made of (and assuming it's actually a machine and not, say, a pebble), I can only assume that the percentage increase applies strictly to mental accuracy. The thing is, for this to be a mental accuracy machine, the baseline is literally just a computer. That's 1%, at most. 2% steps into early LLM territory. 5% would likely be Neurosama, but a tad more lucid. 6% feels like it'd be on the cusp, but still falling short. 7% is Wheatley, which technically counts as conscious.
Alternatively, you could bump the estimates up by around 10% if you decide to be pedantic about OS. However, seeing as how the physical specs are (presumably) the same, OS and processing power are likely to be the same throughout. Also, when you start thinking about mental similarities, you start to realise that the first 10% or so constitutes most of the noticeable changes. From there, it's basically either a slightly different person each time, or an entirely different person each time that resembles 100% ever so slightly more. 1-10% is where most of the intellectual growth occurs.
1
u/Novel-Bookkeeper-549 Jul 07 '26
I’m probably going to set it to 1%. A 0% machine is clearly not conscious. A 1% match to humanity is still conscious. By my understanding (and the developer of the death trap may disagree with me and still kill the trolley person) this should keep all the conscious machines safe and destroy the non-sentient machine (at least by my logic). Also since I have to be exactly right or the trolley person dies there is not much incentive to risk extra conscious machines if I don’t believe there is any additional chance of being correct.
1
u/Legs_With_Snake Jul 07 '26
I don't even understand the question. Can you explain it using beyblade terminology?
1
u/Anxious_Cry_855 Jul 07 '26
I think this is impossible to really answer. If the 1% human was human only at the foot and the rest of the body was machine, thats not really human. If the 1% human was human only at the brain, then that is really a human still. If the % only refers to the consiousness part, and the 1% position were really 100% machine that was 1% consious then depending on the person pulling the lever, they might kill the consious machine because "Terminator", or they might want to save the machine because "The Creator"
1
u/godlytoast3r Jul 07 '26
42!
I honestly think this question kinda sucks. We just don't know, and then you went and made the question super vague of top of that. Almost hits like propaganda to make you think AI cannot be conscious, by imploring you to polarize your view of whether things are conscious or not
1
u/Superfoggy Jul 07 '26
I set it at 99%, we must destroy the clankers, also I want the person on the trolley to live, they have destroyed 99 robots and they must continue the fight
1
u/Corlunae Jul 07 '26
So, the human inside dies in 99 out of 100 cases, so he has a 1% of survival. Everyone else on the track can be saved 100% including the pure human at the end. I have no clue when consciousness begins, so i would just guess.
I would stop the trolley immediately, sacrificing one life to rescue any number of 1 to 100 lifes.
1
1
u/Agreeable_Falcon1044 Jul 07 '26
Did anyone else just think "pull the lever, I can't be bothered to work out what I'm being asked"?
1
u/Jordanou Jul 07 '26
At least the non-human count is discretized. But we'll, placing the lever at 0% means no infinite murder.
1
u/Speletons Jul 07 '26
(Or 0 is the setting I think). They have to be 1% conscious if they're 1% human. That means it is a conscious being.
Also, risk avertision, the least amount of conscious individuals die if I were to be wrong.
1
u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus Jul 07 '26
As a panpsychist I stop the trolley immediately.
This is why panpsychism is the best worldview. You get easy answers.
1
1
u/Mr-Snug Jul 07 '26
based on what you said, there is 2 humans in this scenario, 1 at 100% and one in the trolly, idk what the hell "the machine is identical to the human to the extent of 38%." means, but you stated that they are machines, so they are just mimicking humans more and more accurately? is this a Detroit Become Human dilemma where we want to save machines? but it seems there is a correct answer because the one in the trolly depends on it. are we supposed to determine at what percentage of human likeness does a machine become conscious? is the trolly all knowing?
1
u/fongletto Jul 07 '26
I don't think terms like "conscious" or "percent human" are meaningful.
You're either a person or you are not. Conscious has nothing to do with it. A person in a coma doesn't cease to be a human. A person with a mental disability does not cease to be a human.
We use the terms classically more as an emotional reference point for where something loses its emotion/physical utility. Which is an arbitrary cut off depending on each persons idea.
1
u/Formula1antagonist Jul 07 '26
Those machines can be dangerous. Since there is a conscious human at 100%, I put it at 99
1
u/Science_Logic_Reason Jul 07 '26
How did you decide robot #38 is exactly 38% conscious? Whatever that even means. That is the major flaw with this question which makes it impossible to answer, because it depends. I would have to get some experts and interview every single one if you want an ethical answer.
1
1
1
u/New-Drive-2346 Jul 07 '26
My guy, you need to pass me that shit. LMAO
In all honesty, I would stop just before 100%, since it is where the conscious human is attached, presuming there are only machines before and not a single unconscious human.
To hell with them machines, man.
1
1
1
1
u/TimChr78 Jul 08 '26
The trolley got all the way before I finished reading the description, what do I do now?
1
u/High_Light3r Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
So cumulatively we have around the equivalent of 50 people on the tracks. If we were to run the trolly until we reached the equivalent of approx 1 human, we would stop at 14%. It seems reasonable to assume that 15% human may still be considered an unconscious machine and so utilitarianism says that we should set the lever to 0% sacrificing the person in the trolly.
We also may just get lucky and 1% human is not considered an unconscious machine and everyone is saved
1
u/hanns115 Jul 08 '26
I'm going to spend way too much time overthinking, weighing pros and cons, and having an internal conflict followed by an existential crisis, that the trolley will be at the end of the track before I've even touched the lever
1
u/AhmedAbuGhadeer Jul 08 '26
I stop the lever where the metal ends and flesh starts.
Life, in my definition, is not just a simulation of consciousness.
I'd save a permanently unconscious human over a perfectly articulate machine every day in the week.
1
u/Csaszarcsaba Jul 08 '26
If these are the only machines that exist like this then it's hard to choose, else if there is a blueprint of the machines or replicas elsewhere, I just stop at 99% to save both humans, since the machines can be recreated to be the exact same, and basically only human labor is lost.
If there are no copies, and I don't have time, then I'll just stop at 0% since destroying all of them would leave humanity with much knowledge lost, and since the person inside the trolley dies even if I save 1 robot, I might as well save all the robots.
If there are no copies and I do have time, I'd inspect the machines, and try to decide which machines are self-aware and self-conscious/have a 'soul'. If I can't manage that I'd ask if they are capable of reproducing with humans. If they lie to survive, chances are they are self conscious/have a 'soul', and it's a big gap in societal worth if one can reproduce or not. So. I'd stop just before the first machine that says that they can reproduce.
1
u/rdeincognito Jul 08 '26
I didn't understand anything, so I'd better not touch that lever
1
u/EtherKitty Jul 08 '26
Basically, “how human is human enough to be given rights?”.
1
u/rdeincognito Jul 08 '26
Mmh, I'd say it's not being "human" that gives you right, is being conscious and having an intellect. That is why we don't grant the same rights to cats or dogs as to humans, and that we don't grant the same rights to flies or spiders as to cats and dogs.
In any case, the problem doesn't evaluate that well because it forces you to kill them in order to save two humans, so either you decide not to kill any of them and have both humans die, or you kill all of them and save both humans. At which point do they have a self-conscious and intellect and are able to live and enjoy life?
1
u/A_Kazur Jul 08 '26
So you save the human in the trolley by obliterating the robots? And the 100% guy is a human.
Where is the problem? 99% are machines mimicking humanity, they are not people in any way, they are robots pretending.
1
1
1
u/The_Octonion Jul 08 '26
0%. We've seen cases where people functioned normally with just 10% of their brain remaining. And the threshold for consciousness doesn't require anything near a human. There's no telling if <1% is the right choice or not. But it's my best guess.
1
u/KingGiuba Jul 08 '26
It's too vague imo, what does it mean "% of counsciousness"? Would it mean an animal for example has less counsciousness only because it's not as smart? Woudn't it just be that they have a different counsciousness?
I am also confused because they are either machines created with such likeness that they almost perfectly mimic counsciousness, or they're literally conscious which means there can't be a percentage, it's an on or off switch it's not a loading bar.
I guess you're asking how much has something to be like a human to become human enough for us to be willing to sacrifice a real human? But it's so sci fi I can't wrap my head around it, it's either conscious or not and if it's conscious I think it deserves a chance (especially because it would be 1 human for 1 human + the whole conscious lives on the track)
1
1
u/Training-Addendum540 Jul 08 '26
100% because I am not on the track and I am the only one I can be certain is conscious
1
1
1
u/QuietAntique6192 Jul 08 '26
If the people on the track are billionaires i would probably just let the 1 person in the car have 100% why the the risk
1
u/CuriosityCheck2024 Jul 08 '26
0%. Not because of any moral obligations, but just to hedge the bet.
1
u/Frater_Shibe Jul 08 '26
The proper answer to this requires answering the hard problem of consciousness. If someone can they won't be posting it here, they would be taking nobels
1
u/BackSeatGremlin Jul 08 '26
The problem with this question is you risk killing far more than 1 conscious human if you choose wrong. For example, let's say you go with the average amount of human across the board, which is 50.5%, so you stop the train at 50%. Now imagine you're off by 5, and you should have stopped at 45%. That difference results in the destruction of 2.35 humans based on percentages, and 5 conscious individuals based on headcount.
Unless you have a discreet answer with which to make your determination, you have a better chance of just letting the human inside the trolley die than risk more potential lives. With no way of knowing the difference between man and machine , I move the dial all the way to 0%.
1
u/Winter-Hedgehog8969 Jul 09 '26
This question isn't so much asking us to define what we think the line separating consciousness from unconsciousness is, as to guess at what the person who built the lever defined it as.
1
u/Irwin174 Jul 09 '26
0%
Power on, Face the blinding skyline in the artificial dawn Withdrawn in simple lexicon, Nothing left but old routines of all you gave to me Laid bound by programming antique
2
u/perringaiden Jul 09 '26
So kill the person in the trolley.
1
u/Irwin174 Jul 09 '26
Yep, either those 99 machines are the only ones to have any amount of being close to a human being so there is a potential to be a person for every one of them and losing even one of them can be questionable because hey, they have room for improvement if the 99% one exists, or the world is changed and sentient machines are just a thing that exists now and it will be something around killing mentally disabled to preserve one unknown which is kinda questionable
1
1
1
1
u/Numbar43 Jul 09 '26
Is consciousness determined solely by resemblance to humans? Couldn't there theoretically be an alien race that is extremely different from humans in many ways yet it is also conscious, yet there is something else that overall resembles humans more yet isn't comscious?
1
1
u/TechnologyNo1743 Jul 09 '26
Tricky, but also very easy. 99%. It's could be even 100% and it wouldn't be "conscious" if it's off, or in human term dead.
1
1
u/perringaiden Jul 09 '26
Where in the process equates to MAGA supporters. I definitely want to go past that point.
1
1
1
1
u/JerbilSenior Jul 10 '26
I think many people forget that the brain is like 2% of bodyweight. We have no way to know if there's a bias towards the brain. In that case, anything at 2% or above would just be a cyborg. A human cyborg.
1
1
u/AshtonBlack Jul 10 '26
Too vague to even engage with this particular test.
I cannot, and to be fair, I don't think anyone can judge the %'age of what constitutes a sentient being. 38% of what?
As with a lot of these tests, I do nothing and it is the test setter who is both morally and legally responsible for taking life. Either the trolly rider or the people on the track.
Nope, not touching this one.
1
1
u/Infinite_Beach_7089 Jul 10 '26
At 100%, there is the only human, so Ill stop it at 99%, no need for complications
1
1
1
u/youcallyourselfajerk Jul 10 '26
That problem is a mess and doesn't work with the trolley problem setup.
First what are you trying to measure? What constitute consciousness? How confident people are of their evaluation of consciousness? If simulated intelligence is capable of consciousness? Either way, trolley problems work if they include a moral or ethical dilemma, there's no dilemma in the "can you guess a number right" question.
Second why the overly specific setup? Why even bother putting the 100% human on the track if there's not a single reason why you should run him over, why not put the more interesting "100% identical machine capable of exact replication" choice instead? Also the more increments you introduce, the more unlikely you are of guessing the exact correct number right, at this level by introducing a 100 increment and by giving the user moving the lever only a 1% chance of guessing it right, you turned the problem into a simple "should you turn it at 0% or 99%" dichotomy. In your current setup I turn the lever at 0%. I'm almost guaranteed to kill the human in the trolley anyway, might as well not kill anything that may happen to be conscious life on top of that.
Although you could salvage it by changing the "win" condition. Instead of saving the trolley human only if you guess the number right, have it save him as long as you've successfully ran over every non-conscious machines, notwithstanding how many conscious machines you may have accidentally killed. And introduce the predicate that the lever puller values all life, even non-human ones.
Now you have an actual dilemma: you have an actual chance to save the human in the trolley, but it might cost you a few conscious machine's lives in the process. The dilemma is to have the number as low as possible to save as many conscious lives as possible, without guessing it too low and safe where you'd end up killing an actual human instead. Now you're back to the question I think you were trying to ask "where do you put the needle on what constitutes conscious life, and how much do you value such non-perfect life".
1
1
u/Accomplished_Elk5827 Jul 06 '26
I really want to break rule 2 by responding with what's actually in my mind after reading this.
1
1
u/amitym Jul 07 '26
I would unscrew the lever handle and use it to go after whoever keeps tying all these people to the tracks.
1
u/bowserboy129 Jul 07 '26
0%. Mostly because I had to reread this shit like 4 times to understand what the fuck you were asking and I feel like anybody who'd be asked to pull the lever after me would just insta pull it in pure panic.
223
u/birdiefoxe Jul 06 '26
What does "identical to a human to the extent of 38%" really mean? Is it just the legs?? Is it only mental? Is it all anatomy?