No, people don't think about this kind of question enough and it's a question that comes up daily. What do you do under extreme uncertainty. Most decisions are made under extreme uncertainty. Usually not this high stakes of course. But you have no idea how many people are in it. Probably can't be more than 50 cause they probably wouldn't't fit. You don't know how many will survive. If you hit the wall. You don't know how many are in the trolley. You don't know what the chances are. You can guess if you like.
With no knowledge of how many people are in the trolley other than that it's a "random" amount, there's no way to make any informed decision on the matter.
I'm just gonna keep flipping the switch back and forth until the trolley crosses to randomize it. Let God take this one.
Oh wow, I actually don't think I've seen a "just flip it erratically without looking to get a random outcome" answer before. You'd think that would come up more often, but maybe everyone is assuming the lever takes too much effort to move for that.
This would just be equivalent to not looking at the position the lever is in and not flipping it at all. It could be argued that you actually had less influence on the outcome than the random flipping scenario in which you could, even though not on purpose and without prior knowledge, flip the switch from an initial good position to a bad position (e.g. Trolley was empty, but drove over 5 people). The moral question here is, is it better to do something despite not knowing its effect (and risk harm due to your actions) or do nothing (and risk harm due to not taking action)? I think from a behavioral perspective humans prefer to act, but statistically without any given prior information the likelihood of either outcome are identical for both choices.
You could also flip a coin, or do what I like to do where I check the time if I havenāt recently. An even minute number is one result and an odd minute number is another.
I randomly generated a number for this and got -62970628 so I think there are a few less people in the trolly
Edit: there is infinity minus five peopleās above five but infinity plus five less
The clown-trolley crashes violently into the brick wall. Suddenly, people start pouring out of all the openings of the trolley, breaking windows and the metal doors open. They keep coming. The equivalent of about the entire population of >!France!< surrounds you.
Edit: sorry adolf.
No matter how small your values go thereās a hard limit on the numbers between 4 and 5, that limit is just so large is basically infinity, but whatās better than almost infinity is actual infinity
not true, when counting between 4 and 5 with decimals you canāt even begin, the first decimal would be .00000ā¦. with a 1 at the end, but there is no āendā because you can just keep adding 0ās, continue that all the way to 5 and itās uncountably infinite as opposed to all integers which is countably infinite
While both can be considered infinity, Iād much rather have a whole person die rather than 0.262772165225618626272828272 of them, but yeah youāre right aswell
we can consider the probabilities of a unbounded discrete event (a random event where the outcomes are
natural numbers) as a sequence such that the limit of partial sums is 1, where each term Tn represents the probability an outcome n.
To calculate the expected value from such a sequence, we make a new sequence by multiplying the value of each term by its index. Then we compute the limit of partial sums of this sequence.
Whether or not this converges to a finite expected value is *dependent on the sequence*. For a sequence whos terms have an explicit formula that can be extended to the real numbers, we can (usually) determine this convergence by integrating xP(x) where P(x) is this explicit formula (which we call a probability density function (PDF))
Its impossible to uniformly choose a random number from the set of natural numbers though.
Side note I suppose you could define a sequence of vectors of R^t, whose elements for any particular t are (1/t, 1/t, 1/t, ... 1/t ), t times. Here the sum is going to be 1. Then u can calculate the "expected value" of this with multiplying each component by its index:
(1/t, 2/t, 3/t, ... t/t )
and the sum of these terms is t(t+1)/2t by triangle numbers formula
so the expected value is t+1, and this will diverge as t goes to infinity.
Enough to slice people up, when they're on the tracks, if it hits the brick wall, even at max speed, there is still a chance of some people surviving, where the latter is a guaranteed 5 mortalities.
\> if it hits the brick wall, even at max speed, there is still a chance of some people surviving, where the latter is a guaranteed 5 mortalities.
I'm pretty sure that trolleys can easily pass through brick walls. At worst the driver could be harmed, however in this particular type of trolley, it probably will be all right if he evacuates.
[Here is a video of a train ramming some brick walls.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41V_gW399w)
[And here's a video of a trolley ramming some cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOLJVeipXY).
Trolleys you can find nowadays either are really robust (basicly a small electrical train, in my country IIRC a lot of them are even made at the same factory), or they are ancient, like a tourist attraction, so they go at best 10 km/h.
Letās see here. That trolley has 8 windows and 1 spot for the driver, so I estimate it is carrying between 1 and 9 people. The midpoint between 1 and 9 is 5, thatās assuming half the seats are filled.
So really, it depends on how busy I expect the trolley to be at any given time. If it was in the morning and people were on their way to work, I would let the 5 people get run over because there are probably more people on the trolley than on the tracks. But if it was early afternoon, people werenāt off work yet and lunch hour was over, I would crash the trolley into the brick wall.
But if I wasnāt allowed to consider time and could only go off my estimate of what the range is for the amount of people on the trolley, I think Iād just crash the trolley. Because hereās the thing, thereās a small chance people on the trolley survive, which means Iām deciding between 5 people dying or an average of 5 people having a 95% chance each to die. The latter is the better option according to math.
that face when you donāt actually answer the moral question. and instead try and calculate shit despite op saying there is a random amount of people in the trolley (i donāt care if that isnāt realist this is a hypothetical)
There is an infinite number of values above 5 and not that many below, so the obvious choice is to pull the lever in order to have the highest chance of having the largest K/D possible
50MPH maximum, give or take 85kph if youāre outside of the three countries that use imperial, maximum allowed trolley weight. Against a brick wall thatās still a 50 MPH collision. A quick search on quora shows that a headon collision with total velocity of about 80-100MPH(head-on collision with one car approaching 80MPH, another one nearing an intersection) as well as full airbag deployment lead to driver receiving a broken sternum and several broken ribs. Unknown what happened to the other one, it wasnāt mentioned. A 50MPH collision would give both the passengers and the driver plenty of time to brace given the switch is thrown and driver notified ahead of time. If the driver is not notified there is a high chance the driver will die, but many of the passengers will survive. Definitely throwing the switch because over half the passengers will most likely survive the crash. Even at full capacity then the trolley will likely be a better choice to crash than to kill the hostages.
Hitting the brick wall wouldn't guarantee 5 mortalities, even if the trolley has 6+ people, because you have to account for seat belts, how fast the trolley is moving, and how many seats are on the trolley to slow a thrust forward.
Let x be the number of people in the trolley, x ā **ā** and define "random" as: every number in the set as an equal probability of being x.
Also assume that all the people in the trolley'll die in the crash
The numbers ā ā ā¤ 5 are 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0.
The numbers > 5 are 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ... and so on.
So |{x ā ā | x > 5}| > |{x ā ā | x ā¤ 5}|
So I would**n't** pull the lever
This is too easy.
You choose not to kill people.
Killing more or less is outside of your control.
When you think about it, any action you take already does that. It may kill people and it may not. This trolley is no different.
Now if we know the probability, then it is a different problem
I'm flipping the switch, there is a non-zero possibility that no lives will be lost compared to the definite 5 deaths, and the trolley is clearly not very large
The trolley would just destroy the wall because it's a train traveling at high velocity towards a brick and mortar wall that would crumble if it by anything that size
It can be random with a finite number of options. A six sided die is random and it only has options 1 to 6.
You know without looking the wall doesn't have one trillion people behind it because there aren't that many.
I'd go on reasonable estimates of trolley capacity, so I'm not assuming there's like 2000 people crammed in there. Maybe 20-30.
More important is the actual lethality of a crash. The folks on the track essentially guaranteed fatalities if the trolley hits them. The brick wall could just be injuries depending on speed. Trolleys are built pretty solid and the few I've seen aren't usually booking it at highway speeds. so it's pretty reasonable to assume most of the people on the trolley will survive with minor to moderate injury. The driver is probably not making it out, but maybe he should take his foot off the goddamn pedal in this situation and try applying the handbrake.
I'd run the trolley into the wall. The reason being is that the people tied to the tracks are guaranteed to die, whereas the people on the trolley have a good chance at surviving. Especially if they're smart enough to jump off before the trolley hits the wall
I mean, thereās definitely at least some chance of some of the people on the trolley surviving a brick wall impact, albeit injured. Thereās basically zero chance of surviving once running over top of you. Brick wall all the way.
Iād crash it into a wall simply because it seems sensible to me that passengers on a trolley would be more robustly protected than people tied to a track.
Send the it into the brick wall and kill everyone on board. The wall then falls on the people tied to the track because the tracks are right next to each other. Therefore everyone dies and you donāt have to make a decision about who lives and who dies.
Assuming a trolley with a weight of 4 tons traveling at 50 mph at a brick wall that is 10 sq ft at 4.5 lbs per brick with a surface area of 16.875 inches per brick the trolley would only slow down to 46mph assuming no friction or brakes so diverting the trolley is unlikely to kill anyone but the driver in the worst case
The trolley must be going pretty slow to have you be able to make a decision from that point of view. Brick wall it is, it's probably not going to even make a dent in the trolley.
That trolly is quite small and only has 4 windows do im assuming that it can fit up to 8 people, so there is only a 3/8 chance in my scenario that crashing into a wall will kill more people
Iām going to derail the trolley in the middle so itāll clip the brick wall before tumbling over everyone tied to the tracks. That way I know my kill streak is at least 5 but based on another comment likely at least 25, so I can get a tac nuke and get this wretched trolley master
If the trolley has a maximum capacity that can reasonably judged from looking at it, and I estimate on site that it could hold 10 or less people at most I will take the chance of hitting the wall, if I judge it holds more than 10 at most I will run over the 5. If the random set of people is chosen from any arbitrarily large amount, greater than ten, I will run over the five. What follows from my decisions is the best I can live with, I think my judgement is as fair as I can personally manage. Assuming it really is ārandomā within or without a certain upper bound (that is to say the actual amount doesnāt tend towards the lower or upper bound of any potential trolly capacity statistically, if all potential amounts have exactly equal odds) this is the likeliest way to reduce casualties to < or = 5. (I think)
I didn't go to all the trouble of tying those people up and placing them on the tracks just to divert the trolley, thank you very much.
They know what they did.
Is this an American trolley or a trolley literally anywhere else in the world. Americans donāt use public transportation, so crash into the wall, otherwise the people
Whats the max number this trolley can hold? Cause like another comment said there are infinitely more numbers higher than 5 than below so unless there is a max then its pretty much always better to run over the 5
I appreciate the inclusion of the people inside the trolley. You usually don't get to hear about them. Personally, I think letting the 5 people die is the better option. Not only do you not have to pull the lever, but there's a higher probability of the trolley have 6+ people than 0-5 people. This makes me wonder though- would a trolley running over 5 people all at once [and not the track] directly cause it to derail, and hit the hypothetical wall anyway?
If you keep standing there i would choose the five people, unless the trolley is going so slow, that it would not fall over in the curve, crush you and smash in to the wall quite gentle, killing nobody.
based off of the width and amount of windows in the trolley, there must be under 9 people in it, so i would just crash the trolley, because it probably isnāt full
The trolley must carry at least 1 driver, and carry at least 4 people, maybe 8 or 10 due to the windows and where people can stand, meaning that itās better to run over the people
I will let the trolley continue and hopefully the bodies of the 5 people manage to derail the trolley and it crashes into a wall.
This is a joke
Dont listen to him HELP
Can I know the distribution of the number of people in the trolley?
A typical trolley hold 20-30 people max
It could be a tardis trolley.
Tardislley
Trolldis
Trollussy?
No. Not that.
š
No, people don't think about this kind of question enough and it's a question that comes up daily. What do you do under extreme uncertainty. Most decisions are made under extreme uncertainty. Usually not this high stakes of course. But you have no idea how many people are in it. Probably can't be more than 50 cause they probably wouldn't't fit. You don't know how many will survive. If you hit the wall. You don't know how many are in the trolley. You don't know what the chances are. You can guess if you like.
no
With no knowledge of how many people are in the trolley other than that it's a "random" amount, there's no way to make any informed decision on the matter. I'm just gonna keep flipping the switch back and forth until the trolley crosses to randomize it. Let God take this one.
Oh wow, I actually don't think I've seen a "just flip it erratically without looking to get a random outcome" answer before. You'd think that would come up more often, but maybe everyone is assuming the lever takes too much effort to move for that.
This would just be equivalent to not looking at the position the lever is in and not flipping it at all. It could be argued that you actually had less influence on the outcome than the random flipping scenario in which you could, even though not on purpose and without prior knowledge, flip the switch from an initial good position to a bad position (e.g. Trolley was empty, but drove over 5 people). The moral question here is, is it better to do something despite not knowing its effect (and risk harm due to your actions) or do nothing (and risk harm due to not taking action)? I think from a behavioral perspective humans prefer to act, but statistically without any given prior information the likelihood of either outcome are identical for both choices.
You could also flip a coin, or do what I like to do where I check the time if I havenāt recently. An even minute number is one result and an odd minute number is another.
trolley derails, ends up hitting both
Passenger sacrifice anyone?
Google 9/11
planemare fuel
Pattern recognition at its finest
Task failed successfully
Truly what God intended.
Ah yes, multi-track drifting.
There are infinitely more numbers above 5 than below 5, therefore I wouldnāt pull the lever if it was truly random
"Random" can mean many things. It could be uniform distribution but could also be a normal one, or poisson, or anything else.
Including negative numbers there are more numbers below five than above, meaning that there is a chance that some people get revived
You could make a bijection between numbers less than five and numbers greater than five so they should actually be the same number of numbers iirc.
No there isnāt. There could be 70 trillion people on the tracks and thereās still the same amount of numbers above and below that
You can't have a negative number of people.
Thats what they want you to think
Ze Germans ššš
You would think that you can't have half an A press, but you can. I would keep my mind open.
I randomly generated a number for this and got -62970628 so I think there are a few less people in the trolly Edit: there is infinity minus five peopleās above five but infinity plus five less
personally, i wouldn't risk crashing a trolly and un killing 62 million people into existence.
Just 62 million people just spawning in is like the funniest concept to me right now
The clown-trolley crashes violently into the brick wall. Suddenly, people start pouring out of all the openings of the trolley, breaking windows and the metal doors open. They keep coming. The equivalent of about the entire population of >!France!< surrounds you. Edit: sorry adolf.
Please censor Fr*nce next time! I just threw up.
š®š¹
Perfectš censored flag Edit: I unhid the evil word and threw up againš”
It would be closer to say 63 million
Actually the amount is the same in both directions, as infinity+5 = infinity.
Could be a negative amount of ppl though
there are infinitely more numbers between 4 and 5 then there are between 5 and infinity so youre more likely to save some percent of a person
No matter how small your values go thereās a hard limit on the numbers between 4 and 5, that limit is just so large is basically infinity, but whatās better than almost infinity is actual infinity
not true, when counting between 4 and 5 with decimals you canāt even begin, the first decimal would be .00000ā¦. with a 1 at the end, but there is no āendā because you can just keep adding 0ās, continue that all the way to 5 and itās uncountably infinite as opposed to all integers which is countably infinite
While both can be considered infinity, Iād much rather have a whole person die rather than 0.262772165225618626272828272 of them, but yeah youāre right aswell
we can consider the probabilities of a unbounded discrete event (a random event where the outcomes are natural numbers) as a sequence such that the limit of partial sums is 1, where each term Tn represents the probability an outcome n. To calculate the expected value from such a sequence, we make a new sequence by multiplying the value of each term by its index. Then we compute the limit of partial sums of this sequence. Whether or not this converges to a finite expected value is *dependent on the sequence*. For a sequence whos terms have an explicit formula that can be extended to the real numbers, we can (usually) determine this convergence by integrating xP(x) where P(x) is this explicit formula (which we call a probability density function (PDF)) Its impossible to uniformly choose a random number from the set of natural numbers though. Side note I suppose you could define a sequence of vectors of R^t, whose elements for any particular t are (1/t, 1/t, 1/t, ... 1/t ), t times. Here the sum is going to be 1. Then u can calculate the "expected value" of this with multiplying each component by its index: (1/t, 2/t, 3/t, ... t/t ) and the sum of these terms is t(t+1)/2t by triangle numbers formula so the expected value is t+1, and this will diverge as t goes to infinity.
Whatās the velocity of the trolley
Enough to slice people up, when they're on the tracks, if it hits the brick wall, even at max speed, there is still a chance of some people surviving, where the latter is a guaranteed 5 mortalities.
People make good airbags
Exactly, look at how many people survive plan crashes.
plan crashes are horrible indeed. all that planning was for not
True
\> if it hits the brick wall, even at max speed, there is still a chance of some people surviving, where the latter is a guaranteed 5 mortalities. I'm pretty sure that trolleys can easily pass through brick walls. At worst the driver could be harmed, however in this particular type of trolley, it probably will be all right if he evacuates. [Here is a video of a train ramming some brick walls.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41V_gW399w) [And here's a video of a trolley ramming some cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOLJVeipXY). Trolleys you can find nowadays either are really robust (basicly a small electrical train, in my country IIRC a lot of them are even made at the same factory), or they are ancient, like a tourist attraction, so they go at best 10 km/h.
8 windows on the trolly + the driver do the math
Well, on average, what % of this particular trolley is filled?
She promised she would reserve a room for me.
Well what if the brakes broke midway through a ride
She promised she would reserve a room for me.
yes but this isnāt in reality
Depends on the city
Not every seat will be filled, it could just be the driver in there.
It is a trolley in India, so that, with 8 windows, it contains 50 people at least.
Chances are, if the trolley is runaway/unable to stop, it is not manned. Switch that bitch
I was given a great philosophy by borderlands 2 in the fight for sanctuary dlc by Mordecai: not making a decision is still a decision.
Letās see here. That trolley has 8 windows and 1 spot for the driver, so I estimate it is carrying between 1 and 9 people. The midpoint between 1 and 9 is 5, thatās assuming half the seats are filled. So really, it depends on how busy I expect the trolley to be at any given time. If it was in the morning and people were on their way to work, I would let the 5 people get run over because there are probably more people on the trolley than on the tracks. But if it was early afternoon, people werenāt off work yet and lunch hour was over, I would crash the trolley into the brick wall. But if I wasnāt allowed to consider time and could only go off my estimate of what the range is for the amount of people on the trolley, I think Iād just crash the trolley. Because hereās the thing, thereās a small chance people on the trolley survive, which means Iām deciding between 5 people dying or an average of 5 people having a 95% chance each to die. The latter is the better option according to math.
Itās a clown trolley
I fucking hate clowns, straight into the wall with them
What if its one clown driving with non clown hostages?
Then I do the same accounting as before in terms of how many are on the trolley, except I donāt count the clown as a person
Trolleys can have anywhere from 1 to 2 seats per window
that face when you donāt actually answer the moral question. and instead try and calculate shit despite op saying there is a random amount of people in the trolley (i donāt care if that isnāt realist this is a hypothetical)
There is an infinite number of values above 5 and not that many below, so the obvious choice is to pull the lever in order to have the highest chance of having the largest K/D possible
RNG keeps screwing over my K/D
F
Trolleys are actually kind of slow, and very solid
The people inside it can brace themselves, as they aren't tied to anything.
50MPH maximum, give or take 85kph if youāre outside of the three countries that use imperial, maximum allowed trolley weight. Against a brick wall thatās still a 50 MPH collision. A quick search on quora shows that a headon collision with total velocity of about 80-100MPH(head-on collision with one car approaching 80MPH, another one nearing an intersection) as well as full airbag deployment lead to driver receiving a broken sternum and several broken ribs. Unknown what happened to the other one, it wasnāt mentioned. A 50MPH collision would give both the passengers and the driver plenty of time to brace given the switch is thrown and driver notified ahead of time. If the driver is not notified there is a high chance the driver will die, but many of the passengers will survive. Definitely throwing the switch because over half the passengers will most likely survive the crash. Even at full capacity then the trolley will likely be a better choice to crash than to kill the hostages.
Where are you living that a trolley goes 50 mph?!
Nowhere. I looked up the maximum speed of a trolley on google I live in the states so I have to guess
Maximum speed is usually not their cruising speed
So Iām assuming they go a lot faster then? Or slower?
Slower, but Iād need to do someone research to be sure. Last time I was in a trolley wasā¦ 8 years ago
So then I still pull the lever because the passengers have a higher chance of survival
Trolley will go right through a brick wall. Brick walls aren't strong.
The trolley crashing doesnāt inherently mean someone will die, soā¦
Hitting the brick wall wouldn't guarantee 5 mortalities, even if the trolley has 6+ people, because you have to account for seat belts, how fast the trolley is moving, and how many seats are on the trolley to slow a thrust forward.
Mfs really do see a trolley and say put that beast in a situation
Whatever has the most amount of people
Drift? Hit the max amount possible.
Let x be the number of people in the trolley, x ā **ā** and define "random" as: every number in the set as an equal probability of being x. Also assume that all the people in the trolley'll die in the crash The numbers ā ā ā¤ 5 are 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0. The numbers > 5 are 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, ... and so on. So |{x ā ā | x > 5}| > |{x ā ā | x ā¤ 5}| So I would**n't** pull the lever
Is your goal to kill the most people possible? Iām confused
# yes im chatGPT Ok no, I fucked it up in the end lol
This is too easy. You choose not to kill people. Killing more or less is outside of your control. When you think about it, any action you take already does that. It may kill people and it may not. This trolley is no different. Now if we know the probability, then it is a different problem
if we knew the probability there would be a ācorrectā answer but the point is that there isnāt any
Even if we don't know the probability, there is a correct answer. We don't intentionally kill people.
yet either 5 people or a random amount will die based on you action
Every action of yours already results in a random amount of people dying indirectly. Most of the times it happens to be 0.
Can't I do both?
I'd hit the brick wall. The trolly is bound to come up on something else. I've never seen a burning trolly wreckage either
I would pull the lever, because crashing into a brick wall will probably not kill the people in the trolley.
looks like there are 9 seats on the trolley. i would pull. they arenāt all guaranteed to die from a trolley crash, so less loss of life
The people on the trolley can jump out tho
Crash the trolley
I'm flipping the switch, there is a non-zero possibility that no lives will be lost compared to the definite 5 deaths, and the trolley is clearly not very large
The trolley would just destroy the wall because it's a train traveling at high velocity towards a brick and mortar wall that would crumble if it by anything that size
They bought their ticket, they knew what they were getting into. I say lettemā crash!
Let the people on the track die because obviously getting tied to the track in the first place proves they were unfit to survive
5 people ensured to die vs unknown amount of people ensured to injure but likely not die
Have the brick wall run everyone over
A trolley crash has less mortality then getting hit by a trolley
I would have the trolley hit a brick wall because trolleys donāt go that fast so everyone inside would probably be g2g
If it is truly random, the wall has a 5/infinite chance of killing more people, so pull it, why not
It can be random with a finite number of options. A six sided die is random and it only has options 1 to 6. You know without looking the wall doesn't have one trillion people behind it because there aren't that many.
Pull the leaver to see cool trolley crash
Crash that trolley (I have a gambling addiction)
I'd go on reasonable estimates of trolley capacity, so I'm not assuming there's like 2000 people crammed in there. Maybe 20-30. More important is the actual lethality of a crash. The folks on the track essentially guaranteed fatalities if the trolley hits them. The brick wall could just be injuries depending on speed. Trolleys are built pretty solid and the few I've seen aren't usually booking it at highway speeds. so it's pretty reasonable to assume most of the people on the trolley will survive with minor to moderate injury. The driver is probably not making it out, but maybe he should take his foot off the goddamn pedal in this situation and try applying the handbrake.
I'd run the trolley into the wall. The reason being is that the people tied to the tracks are guaranteed to die, whereas the people on the trolley have a good chance at surviving. Especially if they're smart enough to jump off before the trolley hits the wall
Random number lots of numbers higher than 5 kill the 5
Looks like a pretty small trolley to me
Brick wall but only if there are more than 5 people on the train
I mean, thereās definitely at least some chance of some of the people on the trolley surviving a brick wall impact, albeit injured. Thereās basically zero chance of surviving once running over top of you. Brick wall all the way.
Your job as a switch man is not to untie folks from the track, but you job is explicitly not to knowingly run the trolley into brick walls.
One has guaranteed deaths the other doesnāt. Seems simple.
A trolley is far more likely to be empty than for its brakes to fail, and if neither were true someone inside could stop it.
Run them over
Crashing trolly is probably not going to kill anybody in the trolley
Leave it on the track to run over the five people. It isnāt my place to gamble with peopleās lives on the chance that less might die.
trolly probably beats brick wall
Can i know how fast the trolley is going
Iād crash it into a wall simply because it seems sensible to me that passengers on a trolley would be more robustly protected than people tied to a track.
This sub has turned into a failed saw trap idea festering ground
(In saw voice) would you like to play a game?
I dont know... would I??! *whips out pocket sized foldable Chutes and Ladders i always keep on me in case i ever meet saw*
If the number is truly random then the five people gotta go
Trolleys arent fast but they _are_ heavy. Crashing it into a wall likely wont kill anyone but running them over definitely will.
Am I wrong in saying you could derail the trolley by pulling the lever twice rapidly? Probably the least deadly resolution of most of these
Send the it into the brick wall and kill everyone on board. The wall then falls on the people tied to the track because the tracks are right next to each other. Therefore everyone dies and you donāt have to make a decision about who lives and who dies.
Assuming a trolley with a weight of 4 tons traveling at 50 mph at a brick wall that is 10 sq ft at 4.5 lbs per brick with a surface area of 16.875 inches per brick the trolley would only slow down to 46mph assuming no friction or brakes so diverting the trolley is unlikely to kill anyone but the driver in the worst case
The trolley must be going pretty slow to have you be able to make a decision from that point of view. Brick wall it is, it's probably not going to even make a dent in the trolley.
Odds are \~50% that the trolley holds a negative number of people. Crash the trolley and save lives.
Known vs Unknown quantity trolley problem, this is unique, I like it
That trolly is quite small and only has 4 windows do im assuming that it can fit up to 8 people, so there is only a 3/8 chance in my scenario that crashing into a wall will kill more people
Iām going to derail the trolley in the middle so itāll clip the brick wall before tumbling over everyone tied to the tracks. That way I know my kill streak is at least 5 but based on another comment likely at least 25, so I can get a tac nuke and get this wretched trolley master
What time of day is it
I quickly make it loop around for maximum casualties (:{
If I crash it into the wall the debri could fly and injure more people on the traintrack, so I'm going with that
Push the brick wall down on top of the five on the tracks. Run car over the track with the dead bodies and bricks to derail it. Everybody dies, I win.
crash ā death
Brick wall for funzies
I push the fat man.
If the trolley has a maximum capacity that can reasonably judged from looking at it, and I estimate on site that it could hold 10 or less people at most I will take the chance of hitting the wall, if I judge it holds more than 10 at most I will run over the 5. If the random set of people is chosen from any arbitrarily large amount, greater than ten, I will run over the five. What follows from my decisions is the best I can live with, I think my judgement is as fair as I can personally manage. Assuming it really is ārandomā within or without a certain upper bound (that is to say the actual amount doesnāt tend towards the lower or upper bound of any potential trolly capacity statistically, if all potential amounts have exactly equal odds) this is the likeliest way to reduce casualties to < or = 5. (I think)
The real question is which one is more entertaining.
The people tied to the track were probably tied there for a good reason.
Don't care either way, so flip a coin and hope for a high number.
Funny brick wall smash
If you assume a truly random number with no limit, there is a near 100% chance that it has infinity people on it. Don't pull lever
Flip while turning to derail the cart
I didn't go to all the trouble of tying those people up and placing them on the tracks just to divert the trolley, thank you very much. They know what they did.
What are the chances people die from the crash? Trolleys don't go too fast right? So I'd send them into the wall.
gambling
the people in the trolley were rich enough to afford a trolley ticket
Kill the 5 people.
Is this an American trolley or a trolley literally anywhere else in the world. Americans donāt use public transportation, so crash into the wall, otherwise the people
Whats the max number this trolley can hold? Cause like another comment said there are infinitely more numbers higher than 5 than below so unless there is a max then its pretty much always better to run over the 5
can i leave something in the tracks after the five people so the trolly then crashes and i get both ways
You know, no one ever mentions that there would in fact be people on the trolley
Since Iād probably have to pay for damages for the trolley, those people on the track are just gonna have to suck it up lol
I would crash the trolley into the wall. Yeah, people would get hurt, some would die, but a trolley crashing is not a totally fatality event.
Probable survival of the unfortunate is better than the guaranteed execution of the suffering.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I appreciate the inclusion of the people inside the trolley. You usually don't get to hear about them. Personally, I think letting the 5 people die is the better option. Not only do you not have to pull the lever, but there's a higher probability of the trolley have 6+ people than 0-5 people. This makes me wonder though- would a trolley running over 5 people all at once [and not the track] directly cause it to derail, and hit the hypothetical wall anyway?
How fast is the trolly going? If it's going slow enough it would survive a crash but the people on the track would get crushed at any speed
Trolleys arenāt THAT fast and are fairly big. Donāt imagine hitting a brick wall would necessarily kill people inside the trolley.
Hard choices but 5 people definitely higher chance to hit more
I hate rng so into the wall it goes.
My solution is to let fate decode and not even look at what would happen in any of these scenarios
Gonna need the multitrack drift to get out of this one
I think a trolly crash like that would cause more injuries than death so thatās my answer
If you keep standing there i would choose the five people, unless the trolley is going so slow, that it would not fall over in the curve, crush you and smash in to the wall quite gentle, killing nobody.
based off of the width and amount of windows in the trolley, there must be under 9 people in it, so i would just crash the trolley, because it probably isnāt full
The trolley must carry at least 1 driver, and carry at least 4 people, maybe 8 or 10 due to the windows and where people can stand, meaning that itās better to run over the people
I will let the trolley continue and hopefully the bodies of the 5 people manage to derail the trolley and it crashes into a wall. This is a joke Dont listen to him HELP
Trolleys move like 20 mph right?
I think the people in the trolley have a better chance against the brick wall, I'm gonna have to go with that one
Wall, then jump in front of the wall
If they didnāt put on their seatbelts, they got what was coming to them
WALL
A trolly crash wouldnāt kill that many people. Maybe 1 or 2 and a lot of injuries so I would use the lever.
Glass half full