Guest post by Wil Forbis
Let me offer a short, science fiction scenario.
Captain Jake Patterson is a unique individual. Coursing through his half-human/half-Trivinian veins is a chemical formula that can heal anyone suffering from the deadly Borgon virus. Over the course of his 32 years, Patterson has used his blood to save hundreds of lives.
Patterson is currently the commander of the civilian base on the third moon of Planet Zarcan. On one day, Patterson dons his enviro-protection suit and steps out to the rooftop landing of his five-story outpost. He joins his second-in-command, Jan Damasio, who is peering at the dozens of colonists on the ground below. Suddenly Patterson observes a raging, hungry Grog-Beast headed for a group of five colonists. Thinking quickly, Patterson grabs Damasio and heaves her over the railing into the path of the Grog. The creature pauses to devour her screaming body. This gives the colonists enough time to get to safety.
Let’s consider another adventure of our hero Jake Patterson.
Patterson is with a group of scientists exploring the dark caves of Zarg-Nar. He looks to his feet and observes a just activated explosive that will go off in seconds. There is no time for him to flee. Patterson turns to his left and sees that five scientists have wandered into a large chamber. He turns to his right and sees a single scientist exploring another chamber. Patterson heaves the explosive into the rightmost chamber where it explodes, killing the scientist.
How do you feel about Captain Jake’s actions in these scenarios? If you’re like most people, you blanch at his behavior in the first one, but are willing to concede that he made the best of a bad situation in the second*. But, as you may have noticed, these two stories are really variations of the same moral conundrum: how do you balance the needs of the many against the needs of the one? (We understand that Patterson cannot sacrifice himself in either case as that would destroy his lifesaving blood.)
* I base this statement on surveys of responses to the thought experiment known as ‘The Trolley Problem. More on the Trolley Problem below.
Why are we appalled in one case and forgiving in the other? This question is the concern of those who study moral psychology (and its more biologically focused cousin, moral neuroscience.) Joshua Greene, a philosopher and moral psychologist, has a written a book, Moral Tribes, which pontificates on the reasons for our varying reactions to scenarios like those above. Such scenarios are termed “thought experiments” and are designed to evoke specific emotional reactions. Sometimes thought experiments are presented as games in which subjects take on the role of a certain character.
As I recently read through Greene’s book I found myself thinking that thought experiments could be useful tools for writers. For one thing, they offer ready-made moral conundrums that can be tweaked for ideas. Secondly, one can consider how a particular character might react to a thought experiment and this rumination can lead to insight about the character’s personality.
Let’s take a look at several popular thought experiments, starting with…
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
This thought experiment examines issues of loyalty and betrayal. I refer to Wikipedia for a description:
The prisoner’s dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely “rational” individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.
…
Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:
If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)
…
Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with him, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other thus the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is double betrayal. They will both serve two years in prison as opposed to a year each had they kept their mouths shut. The self-interested behavior does not lead to the best outcome, in the rules of this thought experiment.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a set up used in thousands of stories where an individual is torn between his loyalty to his partner and his own self-interest.
There’s a variation of the game called The Iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma in which players play several rounds. Thus, if your partner betrayed you in the previous game, you now have a chance to seek revenge. And because your partner knows this, he has a good reason to keep his mouth shut. Programmers designed software to play the game using different strategies. As the wiki notes…
…when these encounters were repeated over a long period of time with many players, each with different strategies, greedy strategies tended to do very poorly in the long run while more altruistic strategies did better, as judged purely by self-interest.
…
The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move.
Of course, if you happen to know that the current round is the final round, then self-interest would argue that now is the time to betray your partner. And this is what so many fictional (and real) criminals do.
The prisoner’s dilemma is formulated so that each player’s interests conflict with the other’s. Being that good fiction is all about conflict, the prisoner’s dilemma can serve as a model or starting point for story development. And not just for tales of crime. The prisoner’s dilemma could be two prisoners held by the cops, or it could be two lovers who are cheating on their spouses, or two inventors thinking of taking their company’s technology to a competitor, or one of many other scenarios.
The Public Works Game
Another thought experiment studied is The Public Works game, which pits the interests of individuals against the needs of the group. I quote from Greene’s book to describe the game.
In the basic game, subjects secretly choose how many of their private tokens to put into a public pot. The tokens in this pot are multiplied by a factor (greater than one and less than the number of players, N) and this “public good” payoff is evenly divided among players. Each subject also keeps the tokens they do not contribute.
In this game, the interests of the individual are set against the interests of the group. A purely self-interested player lets everyone else put money in and then combines his or her winnings with his or her existing stash. But from the point of view of the group as a whole, it’s best if everyone invests all their tokens, thereby maximizing the return.
One interesting point Greene makes is that players’ strategies vary depending on their location and culture. Individual players in Boston and Copenhagen were very contribution friendly, while players in Athens and Riyadh were contribution averse. There was no universal behavior used by all players of the game.
Does this tell us that people in the high contributing cultures are more altruistic or “nice” than low contributing cultures? Not necessarily. It could be that high contributors are more deferential to the needs of the group. The line between altruism and acquiescence is a blurry one.
In writing fiction, particularly sci-fi, there’s the need to create whole cultures, species and alien races from the imagination. If such a task lies before you, consider how this group would play the Public Works game. Would they defer to the needs of many (As Star Trek’s Mr. Spock might advise) or look after themselves? And what reasons drive their actions: “real” altruism or social conformity?
The Trolley Problem
The mother of all thought experiments is the trolley problem. This thought experiment is really a master scenario with numerous variations that are tweaked to examine different emotional reactions. The initial setup is as follows (quoting Wikipedia.)
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Here’s a tweak to the original scenario (again from the Wikipedia article.)
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
If these sound familiar, they should; they were the basis for my two Jake Patterson scenarios. As with the Patterson stories, both versions of the thought experiment are asking the same question: is it all right to sacrifice one person to save five? As the Wiki notes, “most people who approved of sacrificing one to save five in the first case do not approve in the second sort of case.”
Figuring out why people see these two cases as different is much of what Greene’s book is about. He points out one obvious point: pushing the fat man is a “hands on" approach. You are physically in contact with the person who gets killed. Additionally, there’s the factor of intent. In the first case, you intend to switch the trolley to another track and the fact that someone is tied to the track is an unfortunate side effect. By pushing the fat man, you are using the fat man as the means to stop the train. For the plan to work, the fat man must die. Greene argues that our minds subconsciously factor in these and other variables before arriving at a decision as to what to do*.
* So what is the “right” thing to do in either of the scenarios? Beats me. Greene offers a quasi-answer in the book, one based on the philosophy called utilitarianism that I found only partly convincing. But the question is not merely philosophical onanism; advancing technology may demand an answer. Consider whether self-driving cars facing an accident should sacrifice their passenger to save multiple pedestrians.
What is fascinating about the trolley problem is that it creates a scenario where we are unnerved by the actions of the protagonist but have trouble really saying why. The process of sorting this out could doubtless be the breeding ground for all sorts of intriguing fiction. After all, that’s what thought experiments really are: stories. For eons, fiction has been man’s main tool to wrestle with ethical concerns. Greene makes this point himself in Moral Tribes.
“Nowhere is our concern for how others treat others more apparent than in our intense engagement with fiction. Were we purely selfish, we wouldn’t pay good money to hear a made-up story about a ragtag group of orphans who use their street smarts and quirky talents to outfox a criminal gang. We find stories about imaginary heroes and villains engrossing because they engage our social emotions, the ones that guide our reactions to real-life cooperators and rogues. We are not disinterested parties.”
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