Muchas gracias. Probably should have been able to figure that out myself.

Is the Duncan Black who wrote the article cited ("On the Rationale of Group Decision-Making") the same Duncan Black who writes "eschatonblog.com" (the very liberal blog)? It seems unlikely, but how many politically interested Duncan Blacks can there really be?

Just a caution: using the Notes program on iphone (the default program that the iphone and ipad come with, with the little yellow and brown icon) can be dangerous. Mine seems to randomly delete notes for no known reason. I stopped using this program entirely after it happened to me once. (In my case, it may have been due to taking too many large-ish videos that were sent to my 'photostream' and overloaded it, but I'm not certain of that.)

Obviously if that's not the program you're using then disregard.

If you read the study, they say that the "specific" questions they are asking are questions that were very salient at the time of the study. These are things that people were talking about and arguing about at the time, and were questions with real-world implications. Thus precisely not "trolley problems."

But the study said:

"The statements in condition two were picked to represent salient and important current dilemmas from Swedish media and societal debate at the time of the study."

Well I've finally gotten to this point in the series and I have to say how strange it is to have worked through a ton of very hairy quantum physics (which I still don't fully understand, not really, not by a long shot) ... only to have it utilized to bring down a hammer on a thoroughly stupid philosophical argument. Feels a little like using a car crusher to pop a balloon. But the ride has been enjoyable. Thanks.

Thanks for the link. I read the free chapter. The rest of it ... $15+ for a kindle version? Seriously?

Here's a line that spoke to me, toward the end of chapter 1:

"if you like the metaphor of your mind as a government, then “you”—the part of your brain that experiences the world and feels like you’re in “control”—is better thought of as a press secretary than as the president."

For those who haven't paid attention to too many press conferences, the job of the press secretary is to be a lying sack of s**t who will justify anything done by the administration, no matter how repugnant, stupid, immoral or illegal.

Which of course does seem to be the job of our 'rational' selves, way too much of the time.

I think there's probably an interesting point in there but I can't quite parse the text. Can you give an example?

Me, too.