Life, uh, finds a way.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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I have been in this place before
Came here for this.
Gah, you beat me to it.
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I've never understood why people have such a hard time with the trolley problem. Obviously, if you pre-emptively move that lone guy over to the rail with the five, you can hit all six at once to maximize your score. Just requires a bit of setup.
Simply hit all six with multi track drifting
Y'all kids and your speedrun strats. Some of us have poor reaction time and need to perform safety setups.
That's exactly what I think would happen with the derailing technique described here. Plus you might lose A couple in the trolley as well.
Or just do whatever you feel like in the moment and then jump in front of the trolley to escape all consequences.
Well sure Batman can beat the trolley problem with prep time.
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Or the trolley potentially carrying dozens of people falls over, killing and injuring more people than would have been otherwise.
Problem EXTRA solved, those jackasses were too lazy to hit the emergency brakes and they can answer to FSM for their crimes.
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Sir the Trolley has derailed in an Ohio neighborhood spilling vinyl chloride everywhere. Lets light it all on fire to get rid of it.
We did it Patrick; we saved the city!
They did say CONTROLLED derailment..
Frame perfect trolley skip
Might need TAS
I'm always sad when I see this stuff. I know it's all jokes and whatnot, but the entire meme has been born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the dilemma that the trolley problem is supposed to represent.
The question isn't, and has never been whether you throw the switch or not. The question is that if you throw the switch, are you responsible for killing the one, or conversely, if you do nothing, are you responsible for killing the others?
Whether you throw the switch or not is immaterial to the point. Kill one or kill four (or whatever) it doesn't matter. You didn't create that scenario, so by your inaction several people died, are you responsible for their deaths, considering you never put them in that position? Or are you exempt of blame since you basically chose to be an onlooker?
I don't really blame anyone for not getting it, I sure didn't for a really long time until my friend rephrased the same dilemma in a different way (and omitted the trolley): you go to lunch and have a delicious subway sandwich, but you were not very hungry so you only are half. On your travels from Subway to wherever, you pass by a homeless person begging for food. If you decide to ignore them and keep your food for yourself for later, and that person dies of starvation later that same day because of it, are you responsible for their death?
In addition to philosophical questions, the Trolley Problem is also a good tool in psychology to study human ethical reasoning. It turns out that people's intuitive responses vary quite a lot based on details that seem like they shouldn't make a difference. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe that a lot more people say that they would divert the trolley if they imagine that they were observing the situation from a gantry high above the tracks, rather than in close proximity to the person who would be killed thereby.
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See, it is kind of a Batman philosophy.
When the Joker presents Batman with a trolley problem [Save Robin or Save Catwoman], Batman always finds a way to circumvent it and save both. Because he is Batman.
People will always try to get the best out of the situation, even though that isn't what the exercise is about.
It's the first question in a battery of questions designed to force you to be aware of inconsistencies in your ethical framework. The first answer is supposed to be obvious: Yes, you throw the switch, but most people's reason for that creates a very messy precedent that the distinction between action and inaction doesn't matter, only the outcome, which later questions can exploit.
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what if the trolley running in 88mph?
Then we will see some serious shit!
Then the trolley will fire wheel itself into the future and the people on the tracks will be spared
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So now you killed the 10 people that were in the train, congrats.
It's not going to flip. Tolleys derail all the time (ask people living in Wrocław). They can't go fast enough to flip. It will just stop after couple of meters.
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The people in the train are the only ones with any power to stop it, but they're divided between "smash everyone quickly" and "smash everyone slowly" factions.
There's an old Talaxian expression: "When the road before you splits in two, take the third path."
That could be misinterpreted to mean “turn around and go back the way you came”
Which would be a valid solution to the trolly problem...
There's an old saying in Tennessee (I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee) that says, take the first path, shame on... shame on you. The third path- you can't get fooled again.
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So the allegory here is if you're faced with a systemic lose-lose situation, fuck with the control system.
I don't believe in a no-win scenario.
- James T. Kirk
I don't think this person knows what "controlled" means.
You control when it happens.
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