CGP Grey discusses the trolley problem

He insists that the problem is 'irritating', which makes me expect that he thinks the trolley problem is somehow fundamentally misguided or mistaken or something. But ultimately he seems to have an opinion on how the problem should be treated (at least in the context of autonomous vehicles.) So I guess his 'irritation' amounts to being irritated that not everybody agrees with him?

By the end of the discussion, I'm not really sure what he thinks. I thought he was saying that we should program cars to always keep the passengers safe and never worry about pedestrians - the reasoning being that trolley-problem-like cases are rare enough that adding pedestrian-avoiding instructions would probably end up causing more harm than good in the long run. But then his interlocutor seems to describe his position as the opposite - saying that his 'ideal' car would treat pedestrians just like heavy obstacles to be avoided.

Oh well. At least the interlocutor did a pretty good job pushing him.

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