Hypothetical situations are at the cornerstone of philosophy and decision-making. The trolley problem is a great example: would you pull a switch to kill one person but save five?
Hypothetical situations often force us to imagine a world that is quite distinct from our current one. As such, it’s difficult to leverage our intuitions about the world as we are unlikely to have encountered a similar situation in the past.
Abstracted situations are different – they are the common patterns that emerge from observing many real-life situations. If I’ve been asked for sugar or a hammer by a friend or neighbour before, and then I get asked whether I’d help a friend asking for something, I’d be able to readily use the common intuitions from my past experiences.
Hypothetical situations can be helpful in prompting you to abstract out situations based on your experience, but used beyond that, they can hold danger: forcing you to give an answer to a situation that you have little prior experience with, an answer that you later find out is at odds at with your deeper moral compass.
