Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

[OldTrees1]

Yeah. I think trying to find more options (3, 4, however many) is actually an answer on the moral test: they find both (all) solutions provided unacceptable, and will devote their emotional and intellectual effort to finding something better.

Rewriting the problem is similar: it's a rejection of the scenario as impossible, because they believe that real scenarios will have alternate solutions. Or, if you mean things like "well, what about pushing a fat man onto the tracks," that's less about the people answering the trolley problem and more about the people asking it.

When they create distance, that's actually an ethics answer, same as any other evaluation of their process. In this case, they have a set of rules they follow, and we can have long and arduous discussions on whether the rules they follow are lawful, neutral, or chaotic.

By rewriting I meant people asking themselves 5 variants in order to think about the original question. It is the opposite of trying to find a 3rd option.

Trying to find a 3rd option is rejecting the investigation the question is asking. Usually due to thinking about it as a concrete case that must have enough detail to find a 3rd option.

Asking yourself variants is driving the investigation deeper. I answer this way in the default case, but is it really about inaction vs action or not? If I do variations that keep that consistent, will I still answer the same way? Famous examples include the fat man, the organ harvesting, and the miracle cure. Maybe inaction is no excuse in the default case but suddenly inaction sounds right in the organ harvesting case. Hmm. Then there must be a different reason explaining why.

For the distance I was talking about them trying to reduce ownership of their answer. They try to inject some other actor (a coin for example) into the situation. Although if there is no agent around to inject, does a non agent actor actually create distance, or just the illusion of distance?

Some of these tell us other details about the character's personalities.