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I honestly don't see this as a moral problem but rather a technical/design problem.

For instance, in the example given, the car knows about both dangers long enough beforehand to be able to make a decision. Why couldn't the car be designed to be able to stop properly without hurting anyone, then? Or it picks a fourth path: it decides that running into a wall at a reduced speed would be better since the airbags and seat belts will protect the passengers sufficiently at the speed it knows it can reduce to given the circumstances...

As long as the car is capable of seeing into its future far enough, it should never have to make a moral decision, merely best-decision-at-the-moment is enough to keep everyone alive, as long as it has the technical safety design to implement whatever the best decision requires. Short of another driver's active malicious interference, that is.

I'd be more worried about being in such a vehicle if all the bugs haven't been worked out of the programming yet.
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That's still a problem, though. The grandfather paradox kicks in the instant you know something happens and go back to the past to prevent it. In preventing it, you remove the reason for going to the past, so your future self of that timeline won't have a reason to travel back to prevent the thing, so it won't be prevented, and on and on.

Any survey question about time travel that doesn't address this issue is basically pointless.

Here's my version of the survey question that side-steps the grandfather paradox:

"A time traveler arrives at your door and introduces themselves as Jrxlsnikt. After thorouhly proving that they are, in fact, a time traveler and not a nutter, they explain the following:
1. They are from another world, another dimension, another timeline separate from yours.
2. In their timeline, it is recorded that they (the time traveler) arrived in their own time period alongside a stranger from another dimension (you) and slew a great evil just as it was beginning to emerge.
3. It is known from previous times that, when this evil emerges, many millions of lives would be lost.
The time traveler asks if you would follow them back to the past of their world and fulfill the mission that is recorded in their history. They assure you that you are fully capable of carrying it out.
Do you go?"
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Profile for Berhard

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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