Thats actually a really good dilemma if you think about it. Like if everyone doubles it you basically don’t kill anyone. But you’ll always risk that there’s some psycho who likes killing and then you will have killed more. And if these choices continue endlessly you will eventually find someone like this. So killing immediately should be the right thing to do.

You gotta double it until it overflows to negatives, then you end up reviving billions of people!

Continuously double it so that the trolley has as much room as it needs to brake to a complete halt, therefore killing 0 people.

What if I want to be the person down the line?

Welcome to climate policy.

If I must kill 1 person or cause even more death, I suppose I'd kill the person responsible for this scenario.

Successfully explained climate change

Oh, 100%. Fuck the next generation, I mean person.

Loop continues until entire human population tied to track and there's nobody left to pass the switch to. kill the scapegoat on round one and done

Double it. Then the other guy will double it, and so on. Infinite loop = no deaths.

You would need a crazy low probability of a lunatic or a mass murderer being down the line to justify not to kill one person

Edit: Sum(2^n (1-p)^(n-1) p) ~ Sum(2^n p) for p small. So you'd need a p= (2×2^32 -2) ~ 1/(8 billion) chance of catching a psycho for expected values to be equal. I.e. there is only a single person tops who would decide to kill all on earth.

Gotta find the person tying everyone to these tracks and take them out

Seems like exactly what politicians are doing. Pass the problems along to the next one.

I say let it go for 33 doublings (2^33 people), and then decide.

Right is the boomer way.

I was gonna just do the one but they do say it's best to pay it forward when you can.

People always miss the bigger picture with these things. Why do these trolleys' brakes keep failing? Is it a design flaw in the braking system? Is the maintenance crew severely underfunded? Is it a slippage problem due to improper rail maintenance? It's a shame we can't even organize a work stoppage to sort this out since congress blocked the trolley union from striking...

Throw the switch to pass and then sprint ahead 31 spots so I can kill 4 billion people like Thanos.

Lever half way and it crashes.

Also interesting: What would you choose here if you were an evil psychopath? (Asking for an acquaintance.)

Kill 1 person. I feel it would be cowardly to pass the buck and risk killing 2.