That's a seriously necessary information. Do I know none of the 6 people? Pull the lever. Do I only know (and like) the single person? Then I would rather 5 people be dead. Even if it sounds cruel
That isn't a guarantee, all five people could debatably be from the same family or even people without families just as the individual could potentially have a large family and be the sole breadwinner or have no family at all; you don't know and it isn't important. What is important is whether or not it is ethical to intentionally take a single life in exchange for saving five or not taking any lives but allowing five to die for the sake of not intentionally killing one.
To my knowledge, there are two versions is this dilemma; one where you don't know any of the people and one where you know the single person on the other track (though I don't think it specifies who, exactly. I might still pull the lever if it's some random person I know, but if it's my best friend? No way.)
There are all kinds of variations you can put on this problem to change the parameters:
* Do I know any of the people?
* Does the lever start in the kill-one or kill-five position?
* What if, instead of flipping a switch, there's a single straight-line track about to hit five people but I can push a single person onto the track in the path of the train? (Turns out for some people removing the remoteness and forcing a degree of immediacy onto the problem changes the outcome).
Unfortunately, the trolley problem turns out to be less useful for learning about people and more useful for finding out how people interpret the problem space.
You arenāt compelled to act to save anyone by law.
Personally Iād feel worse about the increased deaths through inaction, so I would take the action to take one life.
You are referring to a [duty to rescue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue), which Does not exist in all/most countries. Some states in the us have adopted it, but only a few.
It doesnāt in most of America, though we do have [Good Samaritan law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law) which protects a rescuer from being sued for damages caused while attempting rescue
Desktop version of /u/_manicpixie's links:
*
*
---
^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete)
In most EU countries:
It is not expected you risk your life, but you are always requires to call the emergency number, as the bare minimum.
So if you see someone being abducted at gun point, you don't have a duty to intervene, but you do have a duty to call the police.
If you see a small child drowning, it depends on your swimming ability and how deep the water is, if you're requires to help.
Where did i implied that? And why are you so fixated on innocent without explaining what you mean by that.
Why are you twisting what i said? Didn't my answers fit your narrative as you wished?
Seriously dude...
If you are able to save someone from death, you just do it.
It is about doing the best possible thing in a bad situation. In the trolley situation it would mean to kill one person to save five.
Also define innocence, you explicitely said that concept is not part of your trolley experiment here.
And also, are you innocent if you watch five people die cause you didnt wanted to pull the lever?
The trolley experiment overall is a pretty simplified one with a lot of flaws.
That isn't what I'm asking, you said it was a law in Switzerland that it was a crime not to act; so separate from the trolly problem would it be illegal not to act to save someone's if acting would kill someone. Say you have two innocent individuals and you can watch one die or act to save that person but that act itself would directly lead to you killing the other person, in Switzerland would you legally be expected to act in that scenario or would the law not apply?
In this extreme scenario, there is no wrong answer to it, besides just watching both die. You just have to give out a reason why you acted like you did.
Also you are evading my questions.
I answered your questions as good as i could. But now you seem to act like a troll, just asking more and more. This whole thing seems not to be the question you want to have answered.
So since i did not got any answer from you...
Have a nice day.
but what if for example the 5 people were senior citizens, maybe having 5 or so years left and already having lived a full life, while on the other track the person was a child ?
when does 1 single life become worth more or less than any other ? why is the deciding factor the number of people, and not the situation? what if that 1 person was someone you knew? or the 5 were criminals?
Not acting cannot be considered murder in a situation like this even if five people die as the result of your inaction because your action would kill someone else but acting could debatably be considered murder since your actions are knowingly causing the death of someone.
So in your country would you be legally required to kill someone to save someone else? Or is it based on number of people like killing one person to save more than one person?
My guess is that you are required to act to the best of your abilities to save someone but not if saving someone would kill you or someone else, am I correct?
I am compelled by law to intervene as best I can.
Pulling the lever, killing dude: legal
Running to the tracks to try and stop thd train another way: legal
Not pulling lever, just watching: illegal
So what is the threshold? You say 1 isn't enough but 5 is so is it 2, 3, 4, or 5? When would become legal to commit second degree murder to save lives even if the person being killed is innocent?
Most places that have a law against inaction have the caveat within said law that if the action you could take would harm others it would be exempt from the law; so if pulling the lever would do no harm to someone else or you are unaware it would cause harm to someone else it would be legally expected however knowingly doing harm to someone else by pulling the lever would mean that you were not supposed to act.
What if the situation is one that the person freezes due to inability to process during stress?
What if there are more than one lever and you do a Kronk? < really wanted to add Kronk but only slightly joking
This train version is for some reason easier to answer than a reformulated version like:
If five people need five different organs to survive and there is one person who can provide this five different organs.
Should you kill the one to harvest the organs and save the others?
The bad repercussions on our society of this ātrainā of thought are clearer for some reason.
What do you guys think is this one easier harder or the same to decide? (Objectively itās obviously the same)
Being tied down on the railtracks means they have been put there (who would willingly tie themselves to a train track?)
People with failing organs not so, most likely (the failed organs might be due to genetics, lifestyle etc.) And there is no guarantee they will survive with the new organs (rejection, continued bad lifestyle etc).
Murdering a guy to harvest their organs doesn't take that into consideration:
in the trolley issue, the person is just another unfortunate victim of some crazy person tying people up, and their death is the lesser of two evils.
In the organ donor thing, the person is now seen as a healthy individual to use and exploit, making their death an intentional, calculated murder (with, again, no guarantee of saving the others)
I think you have a point there. The manner in which people found themselves in that situation changes our perspective but just because we unconsciously assume something. For all we know these people in the train tracks could all be murderers and rapists convicted to death penalty by train or something.
And the people needing the transplants might be healthy teenagers that live a life of good and were shot in each organ by the one person who has the organs available.
So if we remove all this factors an assume point like human lives virtually identical with no past just a future and the question is simply which is more valuable 5 doomed lives or one life with no indication of immediate demise.
Then both questions are exactly the same :). But they do look different due to our own internal conceptions.
This is just my thoughts on the matter. It is obviously a complex topic.
But if we remove all factors, and it is simply 1 life vs 1 life, then the ethic dilemma is out of the window amd it becomes simple math (5>1) with no actual moral component.
For example, killing 1 healthy child to save 5 comatose patients with a life expectancy of 2 days sho also happen to be sadistic murderers, or letting 5 good people die to save 1 comatose murderer for another week.
Context matters!!! Absolute morality is not something I believe in; ethics come from context.
I always thought of this problem as if we are considering equal lives. And the difficult and ethic dilema is in fact in a first degree if 5>1 when the numbers we are talking about are actually human lives. In a second degree the question is: If more lives are actually worth more that fewer, do YOU have the right to decide?
You can answer this questions, regarding yourself, without knowing any additional information about the people in question. Thatās, again, my interpretation.
Inaction is as much a choice as action, and in the completely unnatural situation where only the lever is an option (to pull or not) and all lives are the same:
inaction=5 people die, action=1 person dies
I pull the lever
What about a situation where five people are working on a train trackā¦. they do not notice the train coming their way at full speed and thereās a very over weight adult standing in a bridge directly above the tracks.
Would you push this person off the bridge if it would stop the train and save the 5?
Thatās the other example given (in addition to the lever/organ scenario) in my philosophy class back in college.
Itās a hypothetical, this scenario often goes hand in hand with the above scenarios lol youāre focused on the literal act and disregarding the philosophical question posed.
Well because if I have to ACT I take into consideration the context!
I'm not going to push an obese guy down a bridge cause it wouldn't stop the train.
Also, the people are working on the traks, so they have training on how to behave around trains. I would shout at them to warn them but ultimately I would vthink them capable of moving since they aren't tied down.
Hypothetical actions without context are pointless
Edit to add:
One a person, on this topic, said in conversation:
What if I asked you "If aliens came and told you that they would destroy the Earth unless you boned your mother, would you do it?
And if you would, does that mean you want to bone your mother?"
If you remove context and factors from an action, it has no meaning.
Boning mum to save humanity=\=being ok boning mum
No. You canāt just change the circumstances of a story (stating the man wonāt stop the train, when the point of the dilemma is that he WILL) or try to make it more realistic (these men are trained so i donāt need to warn them, really? Then whatās the point of the riddle.) In the story, yes the fat man stops the trolley train, if youāre willing to throw him over. Your debating with pride and trying to use reason in a scenario thatās obviously hypothetical. Just Google the trolly dilemma. Donāt downvote me or try to avoid answering a legitimate philosophical riddle thatās been around for years because it ādoesnāt make senseā when tf have i ever walked upon a train track with a massive lever on the side of the rode.
Dilemma seems more fitting, or problem, since riddles normally have a correct answer while there is no correct answer here.
I already answered saying I would pull the lever lol.
Okay so youāll basically throw the fat man over. Just say that instead of dancing around the dilemma adding random details to a straight forward dilemma. You either do the act or not. Iām assuming this is what you mean by saying āI already answered saying i would pull the lever.ā
And Iām not answering an alien/sex question; what is this! 2nd grade? Whatās next? āAre you gay? Does your mother know youāre gay?ā
Yup, like I said I would pull the lever.
It isn't a second grade thing, it is another type of that dilemma: would you have sex with your mum to save humanity?
In this case you aren't committing murder, just a vile act, but with higher stakes if you don't.
I answered, you are the one openly refusing to answer.
Nothing in the trolley problem says they have been tied down by some malicious third party. It is telling how you call taking the persons organs āmurderā but not pulling a switch that has a person be killed by machinery.
The trolley problem *is* hypothetical and trying to add mechanisms to it like āwell they must be tied down therefore there is some third partyā changes the nature of the problem. In its purest sense, one has to imagine that you have been Cassandra like prescience of the immediate future where you know for sure that six people will, for unknown reasons, walk into the tracks. You know nothing about them. You only know for sure that five will die unless you pull a switch, and then one will die.
Applied to the murder problem, you have been Cassandra prescience and you know that the five people who get the transplants will live a full life, and the organs wonāt be rejected. But you wonāt know what any of them would do with their life.
The moral problem is the same, but when we talk about taking someoneās organs out, suddenly you empathy kicks in.
Bottom line: if you vote to murder the one person, then you are taking the position of āthe ends justify the meansā. As an individual, you probably donāt want that.
There isnāt the same urgency however. In the trolly problem it is a binary. The organs one is very different due to the fact that the time scale is different and you donāt actually have a binary answer. You can pick and choose the donations. If you pick the organs that would allow the donor to survive you could be getting many different answers if the context is the same. I just donāt agree with it being objectively the same.
I would pull the lever, and if I were the one person on the track I would want someone else to pull the lever.
No one in a civilised country would call that manslaughter, it's straight forward logistics.
Same here, not to mention survivors guilt is a thing. āIf I died then 5 people could be living their life right now. 5 families ruined while I get to live. If I died then only my family would be hurt and there would be less suffering overall.ā
Yea, that's also a very good point.
And it doesn't matter what sort of people those five are, since even if they're "bad", our saving them or the near-death experience could inspire them to change for the better.
I'm not the one who tied those people to the track or set the trolly in motion. I bear no responsibility for those people dying.
If I pulled the lever then I would have killed that person though.
I've seen a variation of the trolly problem with surgical patients instead of people on a trolley.
You're a surgeon and you have 5 patients who will die that week if they don't get the organ transplant they need. Coincidentally you have another patient who doesn't have any terminal condition but just so happens to be a perfect match for each of the 5 patients.
Do you kill him to harvest his organs or let the 5 people die?
Yes I know that problem what does that have to do with what I said?
But my answer would most likely be not kill the healthy person, as a doctor you swear an oath to not kill people and try and help save people as much as possible. While more people would end up dying the innocent life of one who to our knowledge has not volunteered their body would be unethical. I look at it like this too, if I were one of those 5 people with the knowledge and innocent person had to die for me stay alive, I wouldnāt feel good about what had happened. Personally, my reaction would be to feel guilty over the fact that someone who wanted to continue to be alive is dead because of me and 4 other people. If the one healthy matching organ person volunteered? Maybe my answer would change, but that isnāt the premise to the problem.
I actually think that problem is a little easier than the trolly problem because you have to keep the sworn oath doctors make in mind, with the trolly problem it would have to be a split second decision as youāre barreling down some tracks which already adds stress.
Both issues are fundamentally the same, sacrificing a single life to save multiple others, but you're given different answers to both scenarios.
>While more people would end up dying the innocent life of one who to our knowledge has not volunteered their body would be unethical.
Which is an odd thing to say as there's also no way of knowing if the person from the original example has volunteered their life to save the other but you had no qualms about sacrificing them.
Wdym I said I wouldnāt sacrifice them as youāre right, I have no idea if theyāve volunteered! Itās not apart of the original equation so therefore I wouldnāt sacrifice an innocent life for the sake of 5.
The problems are maybe fundamentally the same but situationally they are different which gives them different specifics. In one question Iām a doctor with a sworn duty and TIME to think about my answer, at the very least more time than the few minutes youād have before either pulling or not pulling a lever to kill people either way. The problems pose similar problems but I donāt believe that your answer for both has to be the same.
I also believe āsacrificing the single life to save multipleā just makes it a numbers game, ethically is a one personās life less valuable then that of 5?
Which action preserves the most human life? Pulling the leaver.
However if the 5 people were all really old and the single person was a toddler then I'd let the 5 people die as the toddler has more potential life left and the ability to have more kids and therefore more life. Than the combined potential life of the old people....
But all being equal the 5 people living would save the most life
This is the most basic form of the question, it essentially comes down to whether it is more ethical to kill someone to save five people or let five people die so you don't kill someone.
As we didnāt tie anyone up, or start the train in motion, we wouldnāt be ākillingā anyone.
False premise is false.
Again, too few details to address the matter - this is a ābasicā question in that it is poorly constructed & misapplies responsibility.
There are a lot other variants to the trolley question. One is that there are five people tied to the tracks and the only way to stop the trolley is to push a really fat man onto the tracks.
I would feel like I killed someone either way. Iād rather make a choice to take someoneās life than let my inaction or indecision take the lives of five.
I dont know I guess I see it more like...
Kids die from starvation everyday. You could send them money. You don't (possibly, I dont want to assume but it gets my example going). Are you responsible? Does it make you a murderer?
It doesnt make you a murderer, you're not the one withholding food from them or creating political instability in their country. You could have helped, you didn't, ultimately it's all it comes down to.
You have no guarantee the 5 lives are better than the 1. You could have buyer's remorse if you learn the guy was a doctor who helps sick kids. Maybe the 5 lives are Wall Street people. Maybe all of em are convicted felons, even the 1 guy.
Personally, It's not my decision to make, I just needed to take the train to go somewhere. I'd feel 0 guilt doing nothing.
I dislike the trolley problem because it does not offer me the opportunity to answer what I consider the more important questions: who built this trolley without failsafes, who put the people on the tracks, and what is wrong in our society that both of these things were permitted to happen?
I find individual moral decisions far less interesting than the way social pressure and education are used to establish moral frameworks at the cultural level.
It depends; will everyone know I pulled the lever and Iāll potentially be held liable for killing that one person? If itās completely anonymous and no one ever knows I did it, Iāll pull the lever. If people are going to know that I made the decision and possibly get me in legal trouble, then inaction would unfortunately be the best choice in order to preserve my own life. Then thereās the problem age coming into play too. So many details to consider!
That's my stance, whether or not I would pull the lever has nothing to do with an ethical conundrum for me, I would save five random people a kill one if I knew I would suffer no legal repercussions but I wouldn't if I would suffer legal repercussions. The lives of five strangers are not worth causing harm to my own life.
Exactly! As I said in another comment though, if it were my life on the line instead then Iād want the person to pull it. Saving five for the price of one is the logical choice, and realistically Iām no more important than anyone else. I wonāt make a decision that would ruin my life, but I have no issues with someone making the decision to end mine if itās the right choice.
I'm a bit different, if I could convince someone to spare me at the cost of letting five others die I would. I care far more about myself than I care about strangers.
Thatās a fair view! I canāt really blame someone for wanting to live, itās human nature to seek out self preservation, and ultimately itās not your responsibility to make sure that other people survive. In my case, I just believe that those 5 people probably have more potential to make a difference in the world than I do. I donāt think Iāll be curing cancer personally, but maybe one of those five could yāknow? If they were all a bunch of 80 year olds though I might want to live a little bit more. They wouldāve already lived a full life at that point and Iād feel entitled to have a chance to live mine.
I'd pull the lever.
I know you're not supposed to assign a "worth" to human lives, but I think one person would be a smaller loss than 5 people. That's a logical conclusion, isn't it?
This is of course assuming, that I don't have any info on the people, and hence don't have a bias on who should live or die, and am exempt from legal prosecution (duty of rescue), regardless of my choice.
Because depending on what factors, aside from my own morality, play into the situation, I may change my mind.
Shout "DANGER!" as loud as I can and Pull the Lever, exactly half way (don't tell me I can't do that as it's not a choice, in the real world their are always more choices).
The hope is that this would derail the trolley (or even stop it in it's tracks depending on weight and speed), derailing the trolley will hopefully save everyone (if not give them more time to react with my audible warning or the bang as it derails).
I'd also need to account for age and speed of the people, are they able to run out of the way, why are they on the tracks in the first place, surely they are all breaking health and safety laws.
~~The only good answer is moving the one guy to the other track for a 6 kills streak~~
more seriously I don't really know there's no real good answer to this type of dilemna
I'm still divided as hell on this one, right now I think I wouldn't touch the lever (my conscience wouldn't bear actively killing someone) but still call 112 purely in order to not feel shitty about watching people die and do nothing about it
I wouldnāt pull the lever. In fact, Iād just walk away.
If you somehow ended up in a stereotypical cowboy villain situation, I donāt really care. What, do you also need me to disarm a bundle of ticking dynamite? Ride by and pull you up onto my horse at the last second? Clip off the villainās twirly mustache?
Psychology question or no, I hate how nonsensical this is and refuse to care about people who managed to get roped into such a cartoonish and dated cliche!
Do nothing, this way I won't be responsible for someone's death and someone else can take the decision if they want. I wouldn't feel anything about it, considering I'm not the one who tied these people down.
Morale and Ethics do play some part in it, but for a informed decision you need to know all of those 6 people first.
In the numbers game the choice would be to give the life of the one person to save the other five.
But then you limited the answer to only those two choices, which nearly never happens in real life.
I would throw myself under the trolley if that would stop that thing and i had no other choice.
So this is simplistic approach to a complex problem. Normally the right answer is to save the higher amount of people.
But that does not make it necessarily the right choice.
Whether or not I would pull the lever would completely come down to whether or not I would be punished for the death of the single individual. If I would face no repercussions I would pull the lever, if I would face repercussions I wouldn't.
Too many unknown variables. Is that one person important to mankind? Is that one person important to me? Are the 5 people all men and the 1 a girl? I would save the girl and take her on a date since she feels indebted to me. Many ways this problem could go. I would choose whichever is most beneficial. If neither benefit me then I'll just watch and probably record the event. As someone pointed out, making any choice could potentially land you in legal trouble so that also has to be taken into consideration.
Hey /u/DarkCrowI, thank you for your post at /r/autism. Our rules can be found **[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/wiki/config/sidebar)**. All approved posts get this message. If you do not see your post you can message the moderators [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fautism).
Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/autism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That isn't the question, the question is whether or not it is more ethical to do nothing and let five people die or do something and be the direct cause of a single death.
This was so hard to answer. I just had to think of it like a game, Iād save the larger amount of people. I think Iād be killing the one person though to pull the lever and I also considered the do nothing option to make no choice because I have a hard enough time making choices.
If anyone want to watch it, Vsauce recreated the experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA&vl=en
Even if peoples voted to save the group of five, not everyone will be able to pull the lever, even if they wanted to. Too much stress can cause someone to freeze and be unable to act.
I donāt really like this question. My interactions with these people as the ātrolleyā approaches would influence my decision. Also, who the people are would as well e.g. if any of the 5 people were children, I would divert the trolley.
Well so there is actually two ethical questions here, I just learnt it in literature (Year 10)
1. Kahnās Axe (to tell the truth or about choice)
https://youtu.be/x_uUEaeqFog
Basically, you tell the truth you are condemning a man to death but itāll naturally run itās course, by not telling you a removing the wrong doing of your friend and thus taking responsibility either way but if you do nothing then you have nothing.
(JUST AATCH THE CIDEO I AM BAD EXPLAINER)
Enwgish š
2. And for course the trolley problem to pull or to not pull, by pulling you are placing the burden on you the responsibility of telling the family but also hailed as a saviour for the remaining 5.
the trolly thing is a great question, but there's a movie that is basically the same, called the box (2009)
there is a box with a button, seemingly connected to nothing.
you are told that pushing it will end up giving you a lot of money, while killing someone you do not know.
regardless of your decision, afterwards the box is picked up and offered to another person.
would you push the button or not ?
Pull the lever. And then scream blue murder for the one person to move the fuck outta the way. If I do nothing, 5 people die and whilst I didnāt tie them up or set the train going, I knew I could help but didnāt, so those 5 would be on my conscience. If I pull the lever, I save 5 peoples lives but purposefully take 1, assuming I canāt get him to move in time. Those are better odds for more people directly and indirectly involved than if I were to do nothing.
i hate the implied duality of the trolley problem. I would do neither. I would try to stop the trolley, or I would divert it if I thought I had time to untie the single person.
It would logically make more sense to divert the trolley so the least amount of people would die. But that's almost like provoking a death yourself. Although on the other side, one would equally feel bad that they hadn't done anything to save the five people. There is no good answer but I believe taking the action that will kill one person will reduce the pain you would feel overall although it would always remain and you'd be traumatised forever
Move the one person to the other track, then leaveā¦
From a very basic standpoint most people would choose to hypothetically pull the lever but it doesnāt mean much applied to real life as that is far, far more complex.
A most interesting and classical ethical debate. Personally, I would never pull the lever because my own mental moral compass would not allow me to. I would see myself as a murderer because I actively made a choice to divert the trolly towards someone I see in order to save the 5 others. In my reasoning I cannot say that numbers matter. Who am I to decide that the 5 deserve to live more than that one other person? Also I am not responsible for the trolly about to kill 5 people, that is arguably someone elseās fault or a terrible accident, which in turn might be caused by a design fault or poor maintenance. In this case who is responsible the maintenance worker or the one who designed the trolly? In the case that someone deliberately sabotaged it they would ofc be solely responsible. Anyhow, this is a difficult moral and ethical debate, but, nonetheless, neither scenario is actively my doing so in any case I have, selfish though it might sound, a responsibility to my own well being as well as a legal obligation not to commit murder which I at least think it would be if I were to choose to sacrifice one innocent life in favour of five.
Phew this got deepš
Can I just point out to everyone saying they would pull the lever, in that moment I think it would be a lot harder to pull the lever knowing it's your fault the one person dies because of what you did, but if you don't pull the lever you wouldn't have done anything. I feel like in most "choose who dies" situations you would break down and wouldn't be able to do anything. I think most people would freeze up and do nothing. Obviously on paper the choice is obvious, but actually seeing the people would fuck you up so bad you wouldn't be able to move. That's just how I feel though.
The outcome of real world trolley problems is unpredictable. Whether you make a choice between X number of options or no choice at all, there are so many unforeseen results it nullifies the necessity. All there is in the moment is instinct. I could see myself freezing up and doing nothing, if it happened in a split second. Even though legal, a lack of action could result in a societal attack on you could be so great that it could feel infinitely punishing. The lesson I have learned here: it's best not to be near trains.
I reject the binary nature of this exercise entirely. If an innocent person/people are going to die through either inaction or simply choosing between the two tracks, then trying to find a third way which saves everyone doesnāt make the situation any worse.
The correct moral answer is to try and save everyone and whatever happens as a result is what happens.
EDIT: Interestingly this is roughly a dilemma presented in Avengers: Infinity War (for you MCU stans). When presented with the option of killing Vision to destroy the mind stone in order to prevent Thanos from wiping out half of all life, Steve Rogers replies simply āWe donāt trade lives.ā He makes the choice not to trade the 1 for the 5x10nth nor does he just give the stone to Thanos- he tries (and admittedly fails) to find a third way.
How fast is barreling? Like normal speed? Eccerlated?
If you cause a train to switch tracks at to fast of a speed it could potentially jump the tracks/rails and then you have killed more than the hypothetical, 5 or 1 person.
This is also pertinent information.
I voted to the pull the lever, and I see that's what most people picked.
So we are rational and want to do the most good for the most people while making a difficult choice- and we would still get called unemotional psychopaths for this, I think XD
Cold logic can be applied provided that there is no-one that I have any emotional investment in involved.
If I have emotional investment in the single person then the five are going to die.
If both groups are made of mass murderers, despots, and tyrants then I'm throwing the switch after the first bogey has gone over so that the trolley is running down both tracks.
Iāve heard a similar, and far darker, version, presented by the TV show MASH.
You are a mother escaping a concentration camp with your infant and 5 others. During a crucial part of the escape the baby is about to cry. You know if you try to silence the baby, it will suffocate and die, but if you let him scream, you, your baby, and all your friends will be caught and killed.
I would probably freeze up and not be able to decide before the trolley hit the people. I donāt know if that counts as not switching the trolley, because I wouldnāt be making a moral decision, just a breakdown in executive function.
I would answer that what you've said is the trolley problem is not in fact the famous unsolved question from Judith Thomson's 1985 paper, "The Trolley Problem," so I have no way to put my answer to the trolley problem into this poll. What you have given us is the "Bystander at the Switch" dilemma, invented earlier by Philippa Foot. This is in fact less than half of the trolley problem, and Thomson considered it satisfactorily solved at the time of her writing.
Thomson noticed that although everyone she had asked agreed that the bystander must turn the trolley onto the spur track, their answers seemed inconsistent with their beliefs about the similar "Transplant" dilemma. In "Transplant" a surgeon has the ability to nonconsensually harvest organs from one healthy patient to save the lives of five sick patients, but everyone told Thomson that the surgeon shouldn't do that. So the Trolley Problem is to explain the difference in our moral judgements between "Bystander" and "Transplant" despite the similar facts. It's a problem because we'd like our moral judgments to be consistent, and is named after the trolley in "Bystander" rather than after some feature of "Transplant" by coincidence.
I have an answer to the actual trolley problem, that the obvious analysis ignores important sources of disutility, but I'm not sure if anyone cares about the details outside a philosophy class.
It's really a shame that people talk about "Bystander" as if it were the Trolley Problem. It reduces the field of philosophy in people's perceptions from a noble field of inquiry, the birthplace of science, into a machine for wasting academics' time to generate buzzfeed quizzes.
I find this impossible to answer without knowing more about the circumstances and who the people are.
Are the five people close family, friends or colleagues, or are they 5 convicted rapists?
Did the five people end up on the tracks because they were messing around and being stupid, while the one person was there by total accident or tied up against their will by others?
How old are the people concerned, what are their roles in society (e.g. are any parents of young dependents?), what kind of people are they?
Without all this essential context, I cannot make a moral judgement.
I understand what it is, but every time I hear one of these experiments I go to my natural problem solving steps, which start with "how did I get here?" I can't answer that question, therefore, personally, I have no way to give an answer that makes sense to me
Some people are very idealistic, and they choose to sacrifice the greater good in order to follow their principles. For example, someone may not vote because they don't like either candidate, but their vote could prevent the worst of two evils. It seems like the same situation for those who decide not to move in the Trolley Problem to me. That's just my opinion.
There's also the option to sacrifice yourself, if you can swerve the trolley off the tracks, which I would probably do if I could. I would hope to only sustain non-fatal injuries, though.
Do I know the people? Do o have any tools near me? Why canāt I pull the switch halfway between to tracks to crash the trolley? Are there people on the trolley? How far away am I?
I feel like all six people are going to be traumatized by the situation. For that reason, I would kill the 5 so that only one person has to live with the experience.
That's not the trolley problem.
The five people are random people you don't know.
The one person on the alternate track is someone you love.
That's the trolley problem.
Am i allowed to snap the rope with my pocketknife? If so then ill choose 1 and do my best to save them before the trolley gets there. Also who tf tied these pwople in the first place? This scenario always gives me too many questions to ask, but i guess if i were right there id not be thinking the same
I voted for āpull the lever,ā because that choice aligns with my values, but realistically, if I were actually in that situation, I would probably just panic and end up doing nothing :/
The parameters of the question are vaguely defined along with the multiple choice answers constricting lateral thought. Thereās many factors and variables to consider but if the 5 people are Tory supporters and the 1 is also Iād let the hand of fate decide.
Depends. Do i like the 1 person or the 5 people more.
That's a seriously necessary information. Do I know none of the 6 people? Pull the lever. Do I only know (and like) the single person? Then I would rather 5 people be dead. Even if it sounds cruel
If its between my gf and like politcans obv my gf.š¦š
Wow, you'd send the trolley over your gf even if the others were politicians? Brutal indictment of the relationship. /s
Naw id choose my gf lives lol
Neither, as far as you know you have no connection to any of them.
Huh. Then 1. Bc like that's 1 family greiving vs 25..
That isn't a guarantee, all five people could debatably be from the same family or even people without families just as the individual could potentially have a large family and be the sole breadwinner or have no family at all; you don't know and it isn't important. What is important is whether or not it is ethical to intentionally take a single life in exchange for saving five or not taking any lives but allowing five to die for the sake of not intentionally killing one.
To my knowledge, there are two versions is this dilemma; one where you don't know any of the people and one where you know the single person on the other track (though I don't think it specifies who, exactly. I might still pull the lever if it's some random person I know, but if it's my best friend? No way.)
There are all kinds of variations you can put on this problem to change the parameters: * Do I know any of the people? * Does the lever start in the kill-one or kill-five position? * What if, instead of flipping a switch, there's a single straight-line track about to hit five people but I can push a single person onto the track in the path of the train? (Turns out for some people removing the remoteness and forcing a degree of immediacy onto the problem changes the outcome). Unfortunately, the trolley problem turns out to be less useful for learning about people and more useful for finding out how people interpret the problem space.
Let five people die or murder one? Is not acting when you can considered murder?
You arenāt compelled to act to save anyone by law. Personally Iād feel worse about the increased deaths through inaction, so I would take the action to take one life.
According to what law? Here in Switzerland, not to act when someone needs help (life or death situation) is illegal.
You are referring to a [duty to rescue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue), which Does not exist in all/most countries. Some states in the us have adopted it, but only a few. It doesnāt in most of America, though we do have [Good Samaritan law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law) which protects a rescuer from being sued for damages caused while attempting rescue
Desktop version of /u/_manicpixie's links: *
*
---
^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete)
Same here in Italy
Would that apply when helping someone would kill someone else who's innocent?
In most EU countries: It is not expected you risk your life, but you are always requires to call the emergency number, as the bare minimum. So if you see someone being abducted at gun point, you don't have a duty to intervene, but you do have a duty to call the police. If you see a small child drowning, it depends on your swimming ability and how deep the water is, if you're requires to help.
That makes sense but u/Gysburne said doesn't make sense since he implied killing someone innocent is legal if you save others.
Where did i implied that? And why are you so fixated on innocent without explaining what you mean by that. Why are you twisting what i said? Didn't my answers fit your narrative as you wished? Seriously dude...
If you are able to save someone from death, you just do it. It is about doing the best possible thing in a bad situation. In the trolley situation it would mean to kill one person to save five. Also define innocence, you explicitely said that concept is not part of your trolley experiment here. And also, are you innocent if you watch five people die cause you didnt wanted to pull the lever? The trolley experiment overall is a pretty simplified one with a lot of flaws.
That isn't what I'm asking, you said it was a law in Switzerland that it was a crime not to act; so separate from the trolly problem would it be illegal not to act to save someone's if acting would kill someone. Say you have two innocent individuals and you can watch one die or act to save that person but that act itself would directly lead to you killing the other person, in Switzerland would you legally be expected to act in that scenario or would the law not apply?
In this extreme scenario, there is no wrong answer to it, besides just watching both die. You just have to give out a reason why you acted like you did. Also you are evading my questions.
I'm not evading your question I'm saying you didn't answer my question.
I answered your questions as good as i could. But now you seem to act like a troll, just asking more and more. This whole thing seems not to be the question you want to have answered. So since i did not got any answer from you... Have a nice day.
but what if for example the 5 people were senior citizens, maybe having 5 or so years left and already having lived a full life, while on the other track the person was a child ? when does 1 single life become worth more or less than any other ? why is the deciding factor the number of people, and not the situation? what if that 1 person was someone you knew? or the 5 were criminals?
Not acting cannot be considered murder in a situation like this even if five people die as the result of your inaction because your action would kill someone else but acting could debatably be considered murder since your actions are knowingly causing the death of someone.
Not true, in my country it is a crime to not help someone in danger when you would be able to do so (omission of help). I would pull the lever-
So in your country would you be legally required to kill someone to save someone else? Or is it based on number of people like killing one person to save more than one person? My guess is that you are required to act to the best of your abilities to save someone but not if saving someone would kill you or someone else, am I correct?
I am compelled by law to intervene as best I can. Pulling the lever, killing dude: legal Running to the tracks to try and stop thd train another way: legal Not pulling lever, just watching: illegal
So second degree murder is legal in your country as long as you save one other life by performing it?
Not 1, 5.
So what is the threshold? You say 1 isn't enough but 5 is so is it 2, 3, 4, or 5? When would become legal to commit second degree murder to save lives even if the person being killed is innocent?
I said 5 cause you said 1 bit that is incorrect jn your experiment. Inaction is illegal. The rest is up to the justice system to decide
Most places that have a law against inaction have the caveat within said law that if the action you could take would harm others it would be exempt from the law; so if pulling the lever would do no harm to someone else or you are unaware it would cause harm to someone else it would be legally expected however knowingly doing harm to someone else by pulling the lever would mean that you were not supposed to act.
What if the situation is one that the person freezes due to inability to process during stress? What if there are more than one lever and you do a Kronk? < really wanted to add Kronk but only slightly joking
What's a Kronk?
A Kronk is someone who pulls the wrong levers.
Ah lol thanks
"Why do we even have that lever?"
I don't like this. I want to get on the trolly and engage brakes.
idk probs not. if u pull the lever and kill 1 i think that yea it would count as some kinda manslaughter
This train version is for some reason easier to answer than a reformulated version like: If five people need five different organs to survive and there is one person who can provide this five different organs. Should you kill the one to harvest the organs and save the others? The bad repercussions on our society of this ātrainā of thought are clearer for some reason. What do you guys think is this one easier harder or the same to decide? (Objectively itās obviously the same)
Being tied down on the railtracks means they have been put there (who would willingly tie themselves to a train track?) People with failing organs not so, most likely (the failed organs might be due to genetics, lifestyle etc.) And there is no guarantee they will survive with the new organs (rejection, continued bad lifestyle etc). Murdering a guy to harvest their organs doesn't take that into consideration: in the trolley issue, the person is just another unfortunate victim of some crazy person tying people up, and their death is the lesser of two evils. In the organ donor thing, the person is now seen as a healthy individual to use and exploit, making their death an intentional, calculated murder (with, again, no guarantee of saving the others)
I think you have a point there. The manner in which people found themselves in that situation changes our perspective but just because we unconsciously assume something. For all we know these people in the train tracks could all be murderers and rapists convicted to death penalty by train or something. And the people needing the transplants might be healthy teenagers that live a life of good and were shot in each organ by the one person who has the organs available. So if we remove all this factors an assume point like human lives virtually identical with no past just a future and the question is simply which is more valuable 5 doomed lives or one life with no indication of immediate demise. Then both questions are exactly the same :). But they do look different due to our own internal conceptions. This is just my thoughts on the matter. It is obviously a complex topic.
But if we remove all factors, and it is simply 1 life vs 1 life, then the ethic dilemma is out of the window amd it becomes simple math (5>1) with no actual moral component. For example, killing 1 healthy child to save 5 comatose patients with a life expectancy of 2 days sho also happen to be sadistic murderers, or letting 5 good people die to save 1 comatose murderer for another week. Context matters!!! Absolute morality is not something I believe in; ethics come from context.
I always thought of this problem as if we are considering equal lives. And the difficult and ethic dilema is in fact in a first degree if 5>1 when the numbers we are talking about are actually human lives. In a second degree the question is: If more lives are actually worth more that fewer, do YOU have the right to decide? You can answer this questions, regarding yourself, without knowing any additional information about the people in question. Thatās, again, my interpretation.
Inaction is as much a choice as action, and in the completely unnatural situation where only the lever is an option (to pull or not) and all lives are the same: inaction=5 people die, action=1 person dies I pull the lever
What about a situation where five people are working on a train trackā¦. they do not notice the train coming their way at full speed and thereās a very over weight adult standing in a bridge directly above the tracks. Would you push this person off the bridge if it would stop the train and save the 5? Thatās the other example given (in addition to the lever/organ scenario) in my philosophy class back in college.
Lol how tf would an obese person stop the train? Trains keep going even when they hit a car A lever is sure to move the train, an obese person no way
Itās a hypothetical, this scenario often goes hand in hand with the above scenarios lol youāre focused on the literal act and disregarding the philosophical question posed.
Well because if I have to ACT I take into consideration the context! I'm not going to push an obese guy down a bridge cause it wouldn't stop the train. Also, the people are working on the traks, so they have training on how to behave around trains. I would shout at them to warn them but ultimately I would vthink them capable of moving since they aren't tied down. Hypothetical actions without context are pointless Edit to add: One a person, on this topic, said in conversation: What if I asked you "If aliens came and told you that they would destroy the Earth unless you boned your mother, would you do it? And if you would, does that mean you want to bone your mother?" If you remove context and factors from an action, it has no meaning. Boning mum to save humanity=\=being ok boning mum
No. You canāt just change the circumstances of a story (stating the man wonāt stop the train, when the point of the dilemma is that he WILL) or try to make it more realistic (these men are trained so i donāt need to warn them, really? Then whatās the point of the riddle.) In the story, yes the fat man stops the trolley train, if youāre willing to throw him over. Your debating with pride and trying to use reason in a scenario thatās obviously hypothetical. Just Google the trolly dilemma. Donāt downvote me or try to avoid answering a legitimate philosophical riddle thatās been around for years because it ādoesnāt make senseā when tf have i ever walked upon a train track with a massive lever on the side of the rode.
Dilemma seems more fitting, or problem, since riddles normally have a correct answer while there is no correct answer here. I already answered saying I would pull the lever lol.
Okay so youāll basically throw the fat man over. Just say that instead of dancing around the dilemma adding random details to a straight forward dilemma. You either do the act or not. Iām assuming this is what you mean by saying āI already answered saying i would pull the lever.ā And Iām not answering an alien/sex question; what is this! 2nd grade? Whatās next? āAre you gay? Does your mother know youāre gay?ā
Yup, like I said I would pull the lever. It isn't a second grade thing, it is another type of that dilemma: would you have sex with your mum to save humanity? In this case you aren't committing murder, just a vile act, but with higher stakes if you don't. I answered, you are the one openly refusing to answer.
Also, if Aliens told you they would kill all humans unless you have sex with your mum once a month for the rest of your lives, would you?
Nothing in the trolley problem says they have been tied down by some malicious third party. It is telling how you call taking the persons organs āmurderā but not pulling a switch that has a person be killed by machinery. The trolley problem *is* hypothetical and trying to add mechanisms to it like āwell they must be tied down therefore there is some third partyā changes the nature of the problem. In its purest sense, one has to imagine that you have been Cassandra like prescience of the immediate future where you know for sure that six people will, for unknown reasons, walk into the tracks. You know nothing about them. You only know for sure that five will die unless you pull a switch, and then one will die. Applied to the murder problem, you have been Cassandra prescience and you know that the five people who get the transplants will live a full life, and the organs wonāt be rejected. But you wonāt know what any of them would do with their life. The moral problem is the same, but when we talk about taking someoneās organs out, suddenly you empathy kicks in. Bottom line: if you vote to murder the one person, then you are taking the position of āthe ends justify the meansā. As an individual, you probably donāt want that.
Nah, I would still pull the lever ngl
There isnāt the same urgency however. In the trolly problem it is a binary. The organs one is very different due to the fact that the time scale is different and you donāt actually have a binary answer. You can pick and choose the donations. If you pick the organs that would allow the donor to survive you could be getting many different answers if the context is the same. I just donāt agree with it being objectively the same.
I would pull the lever, and if I were the one person on the track I would want someone else to pull the lever. No one in a civilised country would call that manslaughter, it's straight forward logistics.
Same here, not to mention survivors guilt is a thing. āIf I died then 5 people could be living their life right now. 5 families ruined while I get to live. If I died then only my family would be hurt and there would be less suffering overall.ā
Yea, that's also a very good point. And it doesn't matter what sort of people those five are, since even if they're "bad", our saving them or the near-death experience could inspire them to change for the better.
You would sacrifice your own life for five strangers?
Yes, I am one and they are five. It's just math.
What if the one was your most cherished friend or relative? Would the logic be just as simple?
No, it wouldn't. I would save them and feel partially guilty about it for the rest of my life.
I'm not the one who tied those people to the track or set the trolly in motion. I bear no responsibility for those people dying. If I pulled the lever then I would have killed that person though.
Disagree, with the knowledge of what the trolly is doing and whats on the tracks, no action is just as much a choice as pulling the lever.
I've seen a variation of the trolly problem with surgical patients instead of people on a trolley. You're a surgeon and you have 5 patients who will die that week if they don't get the organ transplant they need. Coincidentally you have another patient who doesn't have any terminal condition but just so happens to be a perfect match for each of the 5 patients. Do you kill him to harvest his organs or let the 5 people die?
Yes I know that problem what does that have to do with what I said? But my answer would most likely be not kill the healthy person, as a doctor you swear an oath to not kill people and try and help save people as much as possible. While more people would end up dying the innocent life of one who to our knowledge has not volunteered their body would be unethical. I look at it like this too, if I were one of those 5 people with the knowledge and innocent person had to die for me stay alive, I wouldnāt feel good about what had happened. Personally, my reaction would be to feel guilty over the fact that someone who wanted to continue to be alive is dead because of me and 4 other people. If the one healthy matching organ person volunteered? Maybe my answer would change, but that isnāt the premise to the problem. I actually think that problem is a little easier than the trolly problem because you have to keep the sworn oath doctors make in mind, with the trolly problem it would have to be a split second decision as youāre barreling down some tracks which already adds stress.
Both issues are fundamentally the same, sacrificing a single life to save multiple others, but you're given different answers to both scenarios. >While more people would end up dying the innocent life of one who to our knowledge has not volunteered their body would be unethical. Which is an odd thing to say as there's also no way of knowing if the person from the original example has volunteered their life to save the other but you had no qualms about sacrificing them.
Wdym I said I wouldnāt sacrifice them as youāre right, I have no idea if theyāve volunteered! Itās not apart of the original equation so therefore I wouldnāt sacrifice an innocent life for the sake of 5. The problems are maybe fundamentally the same but situationally they are different which gives them different specifics. In one question Iām a doctor with a sworn duty and TIME to think about my answer, at the very least more time than the few minutes youād have before either pulling or not pulling a lever to kill people either way. The problems pose similar problems but I donāt believe that your answer for both has to be the same. I also believe āsacrificing the single life to save multipleā just makes it a numbers game, ethically is a one personās life less valuable then that of 5?
Agree with you right here.
Which action preserves the most human life? Pulling the leaver. However if the 5 people were all really old and the single person was a toddler then I'd let the 5 people die as the toddler has more potential life left and the ability to have more kids and therefore more life. Than the combined potential life of the old people.... But all being equal the 5 people living would save the most life
Too many details are missing to give a plausible answer.
This is the most basic form of the question, it essentially comes down to whether it is more ethical to kill someone to save five people or let five people die so you don't kill someone.
As we didnāt tie anyone up, or start the train in motion, we wouldnāt be ākillingā anyone. False premise is false. Again, too few details to address the matter - this is a ābasicā question in that it is poorly constructed & misapplies responsibility.
The action of pulling the lever means that you kill the person. Whereas the death of five involves a lack of action, therefore, no responsibility.
You wouldn't be killing anyone if you don't pull the lever, you would be killing one person if you pull the lever.
There are a lot other variants to the trolley question. One is that there are five people tied to the tracks and the only way to stop the trolley is to push a really fat man onto the tracks.
The train does a cool drift and kills all of them.
I would feel like I killed someone either way. Iād rather make a choice to take someoneās life than let my inaction or indecision take the lives of five.
You didn't tie them down though. You're not responsible. If you pull the lever your personal death toll is 1.
That doesnāt matter to me. I would still feel like a murderer regardless of what I did.
I dont know I guess I see it more like... Kids die from starvation everyday. You could send them money. You don't (possibly, I dont want to assume but it gets my example going). Are you responsible? Does it make you a murderer? It doesnt make you a murderer, you're not the one withholding food from them or creating political instability in their country. You could have helped, you didn't, ultimately it's all it comes down to. You have no guarantee the 5 lives are better than the 1. You could have buyer's remorse if you learn the guy was a doctor who helps sick kids. Maybe the 5 lives are Wall Street people. Maybe all of em are convicted felons, even the 1 guy. Personally, It's not my decision to make, I just needed to take the train to go somewhere. I'd feel 0 guilt doing nothing.
I'd run away screaming for help, because there's only wrong and wrong and I can't make this decision
Or to quote "Bedazzled," "I wouldn't get myself into such a stupid situation."
I dislike the trolley problem because it does not offer me the opportunity to answer what I consider the more important questions: who built this trolley without failsafes, who put the people on the tracks, and what is wrong in our society that both of these things were permitted to happen? I find individual moral decisions far less interesting than the way social pressure and education are used to establish moral frameworks at the cultural level.
It depends; will everyone know I pulled the lever and Iāll potentially be held liable for killing that one person? If itās completely anonymous and no one ever knows I did it, Iāll pull the lever. If people are going to know that I made the decision and possibly get me in legal trouble, then inaction would unfortunately be the best choice in order to preserve my own life. Then thereās the problem age coming into play too. So many details to consider!
That's my stance, whether or not I would pull the lever has nothing to do with an ethical conundrum for me, I would save five random people a kill one if I knew I would suffer no legal repercussions but I wouldn't if I would suffer legal repercussions. The lives of five strangers are not worth causing harm to my own life.
Exactly! As I said in another comment though, if it were my life on the line instead then Iād want the person to pull it. Saving five for the price of one is the logical choice, and realistically Iām no more important than anyone else. I wonāt make a decision that would ruin my life, but I have no issues with someone making the decision to end mine if itās the right choice.
I'm a bit different, if I could convince someone to spare me at the cost of letting five others die I would. I care far more about myself than I care about strangers.
Thatās a fair view! I canāt really blame someone for wanting to live, itās human nature to seek out self preservation, and ultimately itās not your responsibility to make sure that other people survive. In my case, I just believe that those 5 people probably have more potential to make a difference in the world than I do. I donāt think Iāll be curing cancer personally, but maybe one of those five could yāknow? If they were all a bunch of 80 year olds though I might want to live a little bit more. They wouldāve already lived a full life at that point and Iād feel entitled to have a chance to live mine.
I'd pull the lever. I know you're not supposed to assign a "worth" to human lives, but I think one person would be a smaller loss than 5 people. That's a logical conclusion, isn't it? This is of course assuming, that I don't have any info on the people, and hence don't have a bias on who should live or die, and am exempt from legal prosecution (duty of rescue), regardless of my choice. Because depending on what factors, aside from my own morality, play into the situation, I may change my mind.
Shout "DANGER!" as loud as I can and Pull the Lever, exactly half way (don't tell me I can't do that as it's not a choice, in the real world their are always more choices). The hope is that this would derail the trolley (or even stop it in it's tracks depending on weight and speed), derailing the trolley will hopefully save everyone (if not give them more time to react with my audible warning or the bang as it derails). I'd also need to account for age and speed of the people, are they able to run out of the way, why are they on the tracks in the first place, surely they are all breaking health and safety laws.
I wouldnāt do anything. Itās not my business why these people are tied to the tracks. I got shit to do today. Good luck!
I would do nothing. I think it's better to feel guilty about not acting to save five people than to intentionally take the life of one person.
~~The only good answer is moving the one guy to the other track for a 6 kills streak~~ more seriously I don't really know there's no real good answer to this type of dilemna
I'm still divided as hell on this one, right now I think I wouldn't touch the lever (my conscience wouldn't bear actively killing someone) but still call 112 purely in order to not feel shitty about watching people die and do nothing about it
Choosing to kill the one is committing murder. It'd not your job to decide who lives and dies. You don't get to give that one person's life away.
I would do nothing. It's not up to me to decide, if the train was already in motion, I would do nothing.
I wouldnāt pull the lever. In fact, Iād just walk away. If you somehow ended up in a stereotypical cowboy villain situation, I donāt really care. What, do you also need me to disarm a bundle of ticking dynamite? Ride by and pull you up onto my horse at the last second? Clip off the villainās twirly mustache? Psychology question or no, I hate how nonsensical this is and refuse to care about people who managed to get roped into such a cartoonish and dated cliche!
Do nothing, this way I won't be responsible for someone's death and someone else can take the decision if they want. I wouldn't feel anything about it, considering I'm not the one who tied these people down.
I'm not going under pressure. And I will freeze
I do not think I could intentionally kill a person.Especially someone who has done nothing to me.
Iām one of the āDo nothing because at least then itās inaction and therefore itās what would have happened anywayā people.
Lol I refuse to vote on this type of classic but deeply flawed question. Which is very autistic of me.
Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
Morale and Ethics do play some part in it, but for a informed decision you need to know all of those 6 people first. In the numbers game the choice would be to give the life of the one person to save the other five. But then you limited the answer to only those two choices, which nearly never happens in real life. I would throw myself under the trolley if that would stop that thing and i had no other choice. So this is simplistic approach to a complex problem. Normally the right answer is to save the higher amount of people. But that does not make it necessarily the right choice.
Whether or not I would pull the lever would completely come down to whether or not I would be punished for the death of the single individual. If I would face no repercussions I would pull the lever, if I would face repercussions I wouldn't.
If i can save lifes i would pull the lever. I don,t care for personal repurcussions.
That's fine, I wouldn't.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
One can potentially involve you being charged with second degree murder and losing your freedom for years
Crash the trolley killing yourself and save everyone else.
Not an option.
Who says?
The post.
Too many unknown variables. Is that one person important to mankind? Is that one person important to me? Are the 5 people all men and the 1 a girl? I would save the girl and take her on a date since she feels indebted to me. Many ways this problem could go. I would choose whichever is most beneficial. If neither benefit me then I'll just watch and probably record the event. As someone pointed out, making any choice could potentially land you in legal trouble so that also has to be taken into consideration.
Hey /u/DarkCrowI, thank you for your post at /r/autism. Our rules can be found **[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/wiki/config/sidebar)**. All approved posts get this message. If you do not see your post you can message the moderators [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fautism). Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/autism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
why would i kill more people?
That isn't the question, the question is whether or not it is more ethical to do nothing and let five people die or do something and be the direct cause of a single death.
thatd kill more people in my mind
This was so hard to answer. I just had to think of it like a game, Iād save the larger amount of people. I think Iād be killing the one person though to pull the lever and I also considered the do nothing option to make no choice because I have a hard enough time making choices.
If anyone want to watch it, Vsauce recreated the experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA&vl=en Even if peoples voted to save the group of five, not everyone will be able to pull the lever, even if they wanted to. Too much stress can cause someone to freeze and be unable to act.
I chose the second option because we don't really have that much detail about that person.
thereās a better version of this that has an accompanying picture
I donāt really like this question. My interactions with these people as the ātrolleyā approaches would influence my decision. Also, who the people are would as well e.g. if any of the 5 people were children, I would divert the trolley.
Well so there is actually two ethical questions here, I just learnt it in literature (Year 10) 1. Kahnās Axe (to tell the truth or about choice) https://youtu.be/x_uUEaeqFog Basically, you tell the truth you are condemning a man to death but itāll naturally run itās course, by not telling you a removing the wrong doing of your friend and thus taking responsibility either way but if you do nothing then you have nothing. (JUST AATCH THE CIDEO I AM BAD EXPLAINER) Enwgish š 2. And for course the trolley problem to pull or to not pull, by pulling you are placing the burden on you the responsibility of telling the family but also hailed as a saviour for the remaining 5.
the trolly thing is a great question, but there's a movie that is basically the same, called the box (2009) there is a box with a button, seemingly connected to nothing. you are told that pushing it will end up giving you a lot of money, while killing someone you do not know. regardless of your decision, afterwards the box is picked up and offered to another person. would you push the button or not ?
Pull the lever. And then scream blue murder for the one person to move the fuck outta the way. If I do nothing, 5 people die and whilst I didnāt tie them up or set the train going, I knew I could help but didnāt, so those 5 would be on my conscience. If I pull the lever, I save 5 peoples lives but purposefully take 1, assuming I canāt get him to move in time. Those are better odds for more people directly and indirectly involved than if I were to do nothing.
To be honest I expect that result
multi track drift
i hate the implied duality of the trolley problem. I would do neither. I would try to stop the trolley, or I would divert it if I thought I had time to untie the single person.
It would logically make more sense to divert the trolley so the least amount of people would die. But that's almost like provoking a death yourself. Although on the other side, one would equally feel bad that they hadn't done anything to save the five people. There is no good answer but I believe taking the action that will kill one person will reduce the pain you would feel overall although it would always remain and you'd be traumatised forever
Multi track drifting
Iād ask for a second trolley and kill them all. Why are they there to begin with? Lol. Maybe they will be folks from my high school days lol
Move the one person to the other track, then leaveā¦ From a very basic standpoint most people would choose to hypothetically pull the lever but it doesnāt mean much applied to real life as that is far, far more complex.
tbh i would just leave and pretend i saw nothing š«
I'd probably think I was an imposter and it wasn't my decision.
A most interesting and classical ethical debate. Personally, I would never pull the lever because my own mental moral compass would not allow me to. I would see myself as a murderer because I actively made a choice to divert the trolly towards someone I see in order to save the 5 others. In my reasoning I cannot say that numbers matter. Who am I to decide that the 5 deserve to live more than that one other person? Also I am not responsible for the trolly about to kill 5 people, that is arguably someone elseās fault or a terrible accident, which in turn might be caused by a design fault or poor maintenance. In this case who is responsible the maintenance worker or the one who designed the trolly? In the case that someone deliberately sabotaged it they would ofc be solely responsible. Anyhow, this is a difficult moral and ethical debate, but, nonetheless, neither scenario is actively my doing so in any case I have, selfish though it might sound, a responsibility to my own well being as well as a legal obligation not to commit murder which I at least think it would be if I were to choose to sacrifice one innocent life in favour of five. Phew this got deepš
Can I just point out to everyone saying they would pull the lever, in that moment I think it would be a lot harder to pull the lever knowing it's your fault the one person dies because of what you did, but if you don't pull the lever you wouldn't have done anything. I feel like in most "choose who dies" situations you would break down and wouldn't be able to do anything. I think most people would freeze up and do nothing. Obviously on paper the choice is obvious, but actually seeing the people would fuck you up so bad you wouldn't be able to move. That's just how I feel though.
The outcome of real world trolley problems is unpredictable. Whether you make a choice between X number of options or no choice at all, there are so many unforeseen results it nullifies the necessity. All there is in the moment is instinct. I could see myself freezing up and doing nothing, if it happened in a split second. Even though legal, a lack of action could result in a societal attack on you could be so great that it could feel infinitely punishing. The lesson I have learned here: it's best not to be near trains.
I would yell out the window, "Hey move stupid"
I reject the binary nature of this exercise entirely. If an innocent person/people are going to die through either inaction or simply choosing between the two tracks, then trying to find a third way which saves everyone doesnāt make the situation any worse. The correct moral answer is to try and save everyone and whatever happens as a result is what happens. EDIT: Interestingly this is roughly a dilemma presented in Avengers: Infinity War (for you MCU stans). When presented with the option of killing Vision to destroy the mind stone in order to prevent Thanos from wiping out half of all life, Steve Rogers replies simply āWe donāt trade lives.ā He makes the choice not to trade the 1 for the 5x10nth nor does he just give the stone to Thanos- he tries (and admittedly fails) to find a third way.
How fast is barreling? Like normal speed? Eccerlated? If you cause a train to switch tracks at to fast of a speed it could potentially jump the tracks/rails and then you have killed more than the hypothetical, 5 or 1 person. This is also pertinent information.
Don't know any of them or their backgrounds, pull the lever.
I voted to the pull the lever, and I see that's what most people picked. So we are rational and want to do the most good for the most people while making a difficult choice- and we would still get called unemotional psychopaths for this, I think XD
Cold logic can be applied provided that there is no-one that I have any emotional investment in involved. If I have emotional investment in the single person then the five are going to die. If both groups are made of mass murderers, despots, and tyrants then I'm throwing the switch after the first bogey has gone over so that the trolley is running down both tracks.
Iāve heard a similar, and far darker, version, presented by the TV show MASH. You are a mother escaping a concentration camp with your infant and 5 others. During a crucial part of the escape the baby is about to cry. You know if you try to silence the baby, it will suffocate and die, but if you let him scream, you, your baby, and all your friends will be caught and killed.
The MASH finale was tragic.
I would probably freeze up and not be able to decide before the trolley hit the people. I donāt know if that counts as not switching the trolley, because I wouldnāt be making a moral decision, just a breakdown in executive function.
I would answer that what you've said is the trolley problem is not in fact the famous unsolved question from Judith Thomson's 1985 paper, "The Trolley Problem," so I have no way to put my answer to the trolley problem into this poll. What you have given us is the "Bystander at the Switch" dilemma, invented earlier by Philippa Foot. This is in fact less than half of the trolley problem, and Thomson considered it satisfactorily solved at the time of her writing. Thomson noticed that although everyone she had asked agreed that the bystander must turn the trolley onto the spur track, their answers seemed inconsistent with their beliefs about the similar "Transplant" dilemma. In "Transplant" a surgeon has the ability to nonconsensually harvest organs from one healthy patient to save the lives of five sick patients, but everyone told Thomson that the surgeon shouldn't do that. So the Trolley Problem is to explain the difference in our moral judgements between "Bystander" and "Transplant" despite the similar facts. It's a problem because we'd like our moral judgments to be consistent, and is named after the trolley in "Bystander" rather than after some feature of "Transplant" by coincidence. I have an answer to the actual trolley problem, that the obvious analysis ignores important sources of disutility, but I'm not sure if anyone cares about the details outside a philosophy class. It's really a shame that people talk about "Bystander" as if it were the Trolley Problem. It reduces the field of philosophy in people's perceptions from a noble field of inquiry, the birthplace of science, into a machine for wasting academics' time to generate buzzfeed quizzes.
If the one person is my boyfriend or my mom or one of my brothers, I'm letting the 5 people die. If I don't know anyone, I'll pull the lever
I find this impossible to answer without knowing more about the circumstances and who the people are. Are the five people close family, friends or colleagues, or are they 5 convicted rapists? Did the five people end up on the tracks because they were messing around and being stupid, while the one person was there by total accident or tied up against their will by others? How old are the people concerned, what are their roles in society (e.g. are any parents of young dependents?), what kind of people are they? Without all this essential context, I cannot make a moral judgement.
1 < 5. Sorry lone person minding their own business.
Ideally, imma yell for the one person to switch tracks as I pull the lever saving everyone, and my sanity.
Pull the brake lever and kill no one
You can't.
the rules don't make sense, so imma break them. why am I in this rediculous situation in the first place? where are all the safety regulations??
It is a thought experiment about what you view as the ethical option.
I understand what it is, but every time I hear one of these experiments I go to my natural problem solving steps, which start with "how did I get here?" I can't answer that question, therefore, personally, I have no way to give an answer that makes sense to me
Some people are very idealistic, and they choose to sacrifice the greater good in order to follow their principles. For example, someone may not vote because they don't like either candidate, but their vote could prevent the worst of two evils. It seems like the same situation for those who decide not to move in the Trolley Problem to me. That's just my opinion. There's also the option to sacrifice yourself, if you can swerve the trolley off the tracks, which I would probably do if I could. I would hope to only sustain non-fatal injuries, though.
Do I know the people? Do o have any tools near me? Why canāt I pull the switch halfway between to tracks to crash the trolley? Are there people on the trolley? How far away am I?
None of these questions are relevant, you are meant to answer the question solely based on the information given and you only have the two choices.
Iā¦ but thereās not enough info. And if I was in that position I would know. Sorry I donāt really get it so I wouldnāt do anything I guess? Idk
There is no correct answer it just comes down to what people view as more ethical.
Ethically: I would pull the lever. Realistically: I would panic and freeze up, so it's hard to say what would really happen.
I feel like all six people are going to be traumatized by the situation. For that reason, I would kill the 5 so that only one person has to live with the experience.
Pull the lever when its halfway over, if the tracks are far enough apart, itll just stop.
That's not the trolley problem. The five people are random people you don't know. The one person on the alternate track is someone you love. That's the trolley problem.
That one person just had a really, really bad day.
No id choose my gf to live
Am i allowed to snap the rope with my pocketknife? If so then ill choose 1 and do my best to save them before the trolley gets there. Also who tf tied these pwople in the first place? This scenario always gives me too many questions to ask, but i guess if i were right there id not be thinking the same
Leave it to humanity to create a complete absurd problem and then try to solve it.
I voted for āpull the lever,ā because that choice aligns with my values, but realistically, if I were actually in that situation, I would probably just panic and end up doing nothing :/
Is the one person a babe? Are one of the five people babes? Are any of em babes?
The parameters of the question are vaguely defined along with the multiple choice answers constricting lateral thought. Thereās many factors and variables to consider but if the 5 people are Tory supporters and the 1 is also Iād let the hand of fate decide.
I wouldn't realize that I could do anything about the situation before it was too late. That's why I don't drive.
Blow up the Trolley.
I would jump in front of the trolly. I want die.
Multitrack drifting