edit: alt text

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      You’ll just trust the next person to come along to do the right thing? Yikes.

      Let’s make the experiment a bit more tangible. Would your answer change if the person pulling the lever got a bar of gold for each person run over.

      • cole@lemdro.id
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        7 months ago

        oooh I like this question. technically it’s not your fault…

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    7 months ago

    Your inaction is what kills more, statistically. Someone will eventually pull the lever to stop the trolley, but by not doing anything, you doomed more people. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. A trolley problem isn’t reality though. You won’t find such absolutism and certainty in the outcome.

    An alternate solution is to jump on the trolley and kill each lever puller before you get to them, forever protecting the growing masses. I’m not sure what that symbolizes. Some sort of constant cost paid to protect the rest of humanity.

    And what lies past the track that kills that one or few people? Maybe something worse that this decision, so killing one seemed the most logical, but actually was far worse than postponing the decision and shrugging the responsibility (which is what this is about really).

  • Bazell@lemmy.zipBanned from community
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    7 months ago

    Keep doubling it until we get all 8 billion people there.

  • renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    the solution, as always, is multitrack drifting. according to some perverted mathematics, 1+2+4+8+16+… actually just equals -1, so you end up reviving one person

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      7 months ago

      That does change the answer a lot. As drawn if no one ever does anything, everyone is always safe (tied on a track, but alive). Can anyone at the level count on the next people down the line to not pull? Or it is “not my problem”, basically?

      I still say what I said in my other reply, we can only see what’s given to us and assumed is the only problem, but what if there’s worse things down the track that seems the best answer right now? I guess in reality we can only work with what we know, so we have to make some decisions that have blind spots too.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          7 months ago

          As pictured doing nothing hurts no one… until the next person pulls their level. It passes the responsibility down the line, seemingly, however if someone later pulls their level and kills lots of people, you indirectly could have prevented the scenario from even being played out by just being a killer of one person.

          Assuming like I said, if this is all there is and there aren’t any unknowns out of the picture frame. Which in real life, there’s always something more.

  • anugeshtu@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Hm, just one quick thought: Wouldn’t it be better to look out which track doesn’t have people lying there? However, far sight only goes that far, I guess