The Sin of Boredom

There is a thought experiment that is raised in virtually every Intro to Moral Philosophy course or other realm in which individual ethics are explored: the trolley problem. It has seen a resurgence in popular culture as it relates to artificial intelligence, particularly in the context of self-driving cars. You've likely heard it before, and the gist of it is often summarized as, "Would you kill one person to save several others?" (You can see how this would be raised in the self-driving car context. These vehicles are going to have to make "decisions" as to whether to kill the occupant(s) in order to save others on the street or in other nearby cars - and one can easily see why taking that decision out of the hands of the driver and putting it into the computer of an automaton makes many people queasy.) Here's the classical version of it: Question One : You are a railroad track operator and see that the the train is barreling down on a group ...

Why the trial courts must have discretion to deny appointment of a nominated  personal representative In Pontrello v. Estate of Kepler , 528 So.2d 441 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988) , the court made a rather overwrought proclamation: “A judge treads on sacred ground… when he overrides the testator's directions regarding the appointment of the person in whom the decedent placed his trust to administer his estate according to the powers given in the will.” Put less dramatically, the court is claiming that there is virtually no circumstance in which a trial court has discretion to refuse the appointment of a personal representative who has been named in a decedent’s will, as long as that person is technically qualified under the relevant Florida Statutes. This is an odd bright-line rule in an area of law that is generally governed by equitable considerations, a quirk which wasn’t lost on the well-spoken dissent: “[I]t would be an anomaly to hold that a probate court, which ha...