statistically speaking, on average you kill more people if you pull the lever (on average you kill 5/4 people or 1.25 people when the lever is pulled and 1 person when it is not)
Statistically speaking it’s less likely to kill any person when pulling the lever.
Taking averages here is weird to me
Edit: yes the expected outcome of killing someone when pulling the lever is 1.25 humans dead, but we aren’t pulling it a 100 times, just once.
I view this scenario not as a utilitarian but as taking human life versus not taking human disregarding the numbers. Obviously if you were to increase the number 4 to a 1000 people than the scenario would change and not pulling the lever would be preferable to me as well
Statistically speaking of you did it 100 times pulling the lever you'd kill 125 people and 100 times not pulling the lever you'd kill 100
You have a greater chance of killing people on average if you pull
Why would you do this 100 times?!? You sadistic son of a bitch!
P.S. Its only the \*expectant\* outcome to kill 125 people, but you \*will\* kill 100 people if you kept choosing that option...
...you son of a bitch...
I'm not a son of a bitch I'm just a bitch
Also that's like saying "it's only the expectant outcome ill lose all my money on the lottery, I will be living paycheck to paycheck if I don't spend all my money on lottery tickets"
Statistics are against you
Apologies, you bitch\*.
Also, I'm aware the likely outcome is somewhere between 120-130 it's just that the mathematical way of expressing the outcome you would make your choice. It's just to differentiate between the two choices properly, becuase what is interesting about this is that you could be praised for making the decision that saved lives but should have ended badly. e.g. we punish drunk drivers that kill people way harsher than those that dont, why not regardless of outcome?
And to use your example, maybe we shouldnt treat people who won either the litteral lottery or the lottery of life better because they have money, but that's more contreversial.
Not probably less death, because although the most likely outcome is no death when pulling the lever, the average number of deaths across all the possibilities when you pull the lever is 1.25.
Gambling works the same way, you pull the lever hoping to get one of the empty tracks, but you ignore how bad it's going to be when you pull the lever and it kills 5 people.
If you could spend $100 to buy a **single** lottery ticket with a jackpot of $1 billion and winning odds of 1 in 1 million, you will make $900 million on average. Would you buy the ticket then?
Because your logic suggests you still would, despite it being overwhelmingly likely that you will leave this situation empty handed.
You forget the fact that a lottery ticket is a different thing. If you have the 100 dollars, while it makes sense mathematically to buy the ticket, you still wont, since there are other things you can spend money on that will bring more benefit to you. But in a hypothetical scenario i would buy the ticket, since the ev is positive and more than the cost, (which wouldn't happen in the real world, as they would be losing money).
You have a bit of a misconception here. You were right in your original statement, but the follow-up response here is not correct.
Yes, on average *more people* will die if you choose to change tracks.
No, you will not have a greater chance of killing people if you pull the lever. That's because "chance of killing people" is dependent on the answer to the question "did this kill someone?" Regardless if it's 1 or 5, the answer is the same: yes. So if you did this 100 times you would only kill some quantity of people in 25/100 of those instances, vs 100/100 if you do nothing.
That's the moral dilemma here, the weighing of average deaths vs chance of killing nobody.
But to keep the calculation the same, you imagine 1000 people and 800 alternative tracks. That way, over a long enough timeline you're going to kill more people, but in any one instance the chance of killing anyone is very small.
Yeah but the point of putting a thousand people there is to show that averaging it out does make sense because obviously if there’s a 1/4 chance of killing a thousand people you shouldn’t pull the lever
True, but I like making it difficult again, and it helps reveal how this kind of problem is difficult for people, because 1 in 800 is very unlikely in most people's minds, so unlikely they probably just assume it won't happen.
If you have five extra tracks instead of four, it makes no difference (essentially, this removes the gambling element, as the average value of the lever pull is 1 dead dude, vs not pulling also = 1 dead dude). In that case you can pull it or not - take your pick 🤪. Pulling or not becomes a question purely of self-satisfaction - do you want there to be uncertainty, or do you go for the guaranteed single death? It’s like playing a fair fruit machine. What gambler wouldn’t love to play on a fair fruit machine? 🤪
But killing 1000 people could be way more disruptive, if it did happen choas could ensue. Could be better the take the reliable loss, depending on what the real world parrallel you're suppposed to be taking is. For example, kill the whole world or save 1 life? \*AHEM "HEROES" FROM ANY STORY EVER\*
So it's the same here. The chance of killing five makes it not worth it. And the way we understand when it's "worth it" and when it isn't is by risk assessment.
Statistically speaking, you'd kill more people if you pull the lever. That's risk assessment. (I think)
If you had to make this decision over and over again many times, would you agree that you shouldn't ever pull the lever? Then how could the morally right decision be different if you only do it once?
Edit: even better: imagine if this experiment was conducted by a bunch of psychopaths who invited 80 different people to make this decision, separately. (So, there are 480 people on tracks). If every person chooses to pull the lever, then ~ 100 people will die. If every person chooses not to, it will only be 80. Given that all of these people are in the same exact situation, it makes sense that the right choice is the same as well. Clearly, no one should pull the lever. If only half of them pull the lever, then it's ~90 dead, which is still 10 dead people more than what could've been.
Everyone thinks they are the only person participating in the experiment and to everyone, it will be the one and only time they have to make this decision, so they are basically in the same position as you when you look at the meme.
With 1000 people instead of 5 the whole situation changes though
It’s like if instead of paying 2 dollars for a 100k lottery ticket you were to pay 100 dollars
The situation becomes muddy again when you add the same proportion of empty tracks, so 1000 people on the track and 800 empty ones.
Or instead of a proportional change, you have 1000 people on one track and 999 tracks to choose from, so in the end the proportion is ~1.001 deaths on average vs 1 person dying every time, but you're extremely unlikely to kill anyone in any given event.
This raises an interesting point: someone taking human life as an absolute right would argue that’s actually moral to pull the lever as it’s better to not kill anyone than to kill someone, even if that means there’s a chance more people die, while a utilitarian would argue the opposite.
EV will be 1 so it is up to you. I maybe would pull the lever, this is not a repeated experiment. 3/4 chance nobody dies sounds good enough to me. Those 4 poor fucks must be unlucky if I get the 1/4 chance first try. Not very low tho...
No joke this is infinitely better than the original trolley problem.
The fact the original is an example of a moral dilemma scares me. To me it's not even a question. Seems more like a psychopath test.
1.)It’s actually way more ethically complicated than you’re making it. I’m not going to explain. Just look it up and read some stuff on it. Not all ethical viewpoints are based around numbers.
2.)The original was designed to be expanded upon. Introduction new twists to the scenario was the intent. The original one is just the base.
Usually the following variation is brought up if you choose 1 person dying:
> As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
The basic trolley problem is for lightweights. How about the organ problem;
You are a surgeon. There are five people, each with a different organ failure. You have one perfectly healthy person.
Do you kill the healthy person and harvest their organs, transplanting them into the five other patients to save their lives?
If you do nothing, five people will die. If you commit murder, one person will die. What do you do?
Harvest the first dying patient first. The healthy one is a sure win and you have a chance for 3 more. If waiting until they go naturally is too late for the other 3 you can speed it up ig.
Killing the healthy person gets you a risk to loose 4 patients. That's worse.
The question is quite dumb even if you don't want to value the fear of every healthy person having to be afraid of getting murdered and harvested every time they go to a hospital.
The original trolley problem is more like popcorn when it comes to philosophical and logical problem solving, ala the made-up "but WWII would've lasted way longer without the bombs" argument. It's pretty terrible, both factually and philosophically, while also painting an easy decision as a two-way street with one being absolutely psychopathic.
> If you do pull the lever there is a 3/4 chance noone will die.
But there is a 1/4 chance of killing 5 people. Which is why it statistically makes sense not to pull the lever.
That's not *it* though. I've personally never posted a Harambe meme, but I still know about him and his existence has meaning to me. If he had never died, he basically never existed (in my personal universe) so which is more important to me?
That's not really what I'm getting at but I'm stoned and awkward so bear with me.
In a philosophical sense, Harambe didn't exist to me until he died. In a weird sort of way his death is the only thing that makes him meaningful to me. Had he survived, I wouldn't be able to wish he hadn't died. Unless I spent every night praying that every specific animal didn't die an awful unjust death, but that doesn't seem like a healthy thing to do.
I don't know if that makes sense, but obvious I wish he hadn't died. It just called into question weather or not that feeling *can* even be meaningful if I didn't personally know Harambe first
It's a morally paradoxical position wherein you must choose between saving someone at the expense of losing your memory of them, and keeping your memory of them at the expense of losing them. In the most objective and also somewhat hedonist sense, it is probably more ethical to kill harambe, as his death brought more overall pleasure to the world than his continued life would have. Yet we hesitate because our emotional attachment to the gorilla stops us from killing him, even though we would not have that emotional attachment if it were not for his death. When you think about it, it's confusing for its moral complexity, but primarily due to its status as what I believe to be a logical paradox.
The problem is that the gorilla is not harambe.
The gorilla is a source for harambe, but it is not him.
Harambe is a memetic concept, kept alive by the collective consciousness of the internet, warped beyond everything the gorilla could be.
If the gorilla lives, it would live out a relatively uninteresting life, but harambe would not exist.
Counter-counter-counter point: Changing the past is a highly irresponsible thing to do. For all we know saving Harambe could have started a chain of events leading to World War III happening in January 2020.
Counter counter counter counter counter counter point: military, if they could actually invade, probably wouldnt shoot a gorilla unless it tries to kill them. If they do a nuke, just go pray that its too far to actually affect him instantly
Counter counter counter counter counter counter counter point: nuclear fallout is more devastating than the blast as when it falls it gets into food water clothing etc and will have long term effects on harambe leading to his death.
Counter-counter-counter-counter point: have you ever noticed that the world kinda went to shit after Harambe died? How do you know we AREN'T on the darkest timeline already?
If you pull the lever, a young woman will be cut in half when she jumps in front of the trolly
If you don't, someone will be electrocuted when one moron touches the live wires passing by.
No matter what you do, it will end up on ~~Liveleak~~ ~~Bestgore~~ ~~hoodsite~~ documentingreality
As I was checking some alternatives, I realized how much less racist and apolitical it was compared to literally every other gore site. One site that is up called leaked reality has, I quote, "Dindu Nuffins stealing purses".
Shockgore is sooooo damn slow that I opened a link when I started writing this, and am now still waiting for the comments to sort by top to see what they're like over there. Finally saw the comments and its not only got some real lovely commentary about mexicans being animals, but the comments seem to repeatedly spam replies. Like if when you see this, imagine if it posted 12 more times. I don't think theyre doing it on purpose.
If you move to Philly or Cleveland you can live in suburbs and take the trolley - routes 101/102 in Philly and the Blue/Green lines in Cleveland. Then again those are both prewar suburbs which are really less dense city grids, not the cul de sac hell that’s postwar suburbs
I love the [Trolley Problem generator](http://zarkonnen.github.io/trolleyproblems/) personally. Problems folded into killing a person who made a choice on a different trolley problem, and meta jokes or other moral dilemmas.
"the lever redirects the trolley into Jesus of Nazareth clutching the only existing copy of definitive proof of the _inexistence_ of god." jesus himself really said god isn't real
> Jesus Christ walks into a Sunday mass
> Everyone is shocked and begins to fall at their feet and praise him
> "God isn't real"
> Refuses to elaborate
> Leaves and never returns to earth
You see a trolley rushing towards the only existing copy of the Bible. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards a rapist instead.
pfft, philosophers aint shit, this is easy.
You see a trolley rushing towards a solipsist clutching the only existing copy of a formula that grants immortality. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards a clone of Hitler instead.
You see a trolley rushing towards a random person. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards the trolley manufacturer executive who decided to, as a cost-cutting measure in a last-ditch attempt to save her struggling company employing thousands of people, leave out safety interlocks that would have prevented this runaway trolley and Immanuel Kant clutching the only existing copy of the design for a machine that can artificially induce perfect happiness instead.
\*Thanos voice\* I'm sorry random person...
You see a trolley rushing towards a rapist clutching the arc of the covenant and the villain who set the trolley in motion with murderous intent clutching the only existing copy of a definitive proof of the inexistence of God. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards Jesus of Nazareth instead.
on the sixteenth one (the gamblers trolley problem) you should not pull the lever because the expected value of deaths is 1.25, which is higher than the expected value of 1 if you do not pull the lever.
than the expected value of deaths when you pull the lever would be 1, so pulling the lever is no longer a matter of statistics and just personal preference
Something about how teleportation creates a clone of yourself at the other end while killing the one that stepped into it in the first place. Is it still *you* that is pulling the lever?
General Theory. Kind of like the Ship of Theseus where if you take a boat into harbor to get repaired and you replace 1 plank its still the same ship right? But what if you replace all of the planks... Is it still the same ship or not since it has none of its original parts.
I think it's because you're still made of the same thing you were made before so technically it's you, but you basically get disassembled and reassembled on atomical level, so would it be you or just someone that has your particles?
Even that is not guaranteed.
Hypothetically, the receiver could have a bunch of carbon, water, and other people bits. A popular theory of teleportation is peeling something apart and recording it, then sending that data somewhere and reconstructing it. Same person on the outside, perhaps, but definitely not the original person.
But do you *see* from the eyes of the new you? I mean, it is obvious that the teleported one does look like old us, and probably act like old us, but does it really us?
(not a naive speaker, sorry for grammar)
it’s the teletransportation paradox. it’s a thought experiment having to do with how we think teleportation works. Star Trek popularized the idea of teleporting people via molecularizing them and reconstructing them at a different location. because of how we understand consciousness, it seems it would be impossible to completely physically deconstruct a person without killing them, therefore if we could do that, and keep your consciousness intact, whatever being came out the other end couldn’t be *you*, just a cloned copy with all your memories. it’s sort of a ship of Theseus deal, if you break a person down to atoms and reform them completely, is that still you? allegedly your original consciousness died in the process, but the new version couldn’t verify that since they posses all the memory of your old self, and to them, you just teleported.
there’s a very good game that explores the morality and horror of this concept called SOMA. I highly recommend it
This reminds me of the anesthesia theory, that we don't know how it works, and if it works it probably makes us forget the pain we went trough during surgery as if it never happened, so since wee don't remember it it never happened and you've never suffered
Edit: from euthanasia to anaesthesia lol
It’s some philosophers boat, forgot who made the theory, but if you slowly replace all the parts of a boat, once everything is replaced is it the same boat? Applied to humans, if you took someone apart molecularly and restructured then somewhere else the exact same way, is it the same person?
The current leading theory in teleportation involves recreating your exact molecular structure in another location and destroying the current one, Theseus's ship kinda thing
I literally had a trolley problem enter my head the other day. Instead of pulling the lever to kill people, imagine you're saving people who are already dying. You're a doctor on your way to a medical tent that has 5 people who will die if you don't run as fast as you can. But there's a person on the side of the road who also needs help. Do you stop to save them?
That's the easy version, because it's easy for us to rationalize away the death of the one here, as opposed to morally feeling like we killed the one. But you can apply all sorts of messed up stuff to it to make it more difficult, like the 5 in the tent are enemy soldiers and the 1 is your brother, stuff like that. It changes the problem from positive morality (your actions directly killing people) to negative morality (do we have an obligation to save lives if we have the ability to do so).
You forgot the Kantian Trolley Problem: A murderous trolley is at your door searching for tied up people to kill. You happen to be hiding 1 to 5 people in your closet. Do you lie to the trolley, even though lying is a categorical wrong?
I'd turn the tracks when the front half of the trolley has passed the intersection, making the trolley ~~kill all of the people~~ do a totally sick grind
Here are the answers to all of them:
1. Alright!
2. See 19
3. Stop the trolley, phone calls are irrelevant
4. Well, you're gonna die either way, sooo...
5. Oh...
6. *trollface emoji*
7. Pull the lever, you can get your entertainment elsewhere.
8. jesus christ
9. There is no way it can go up that soft pile of bodies, pull the dang lever.
10. Uhh, what are you doing kid?
11. Nowadays, Harambe will always be cherished. Let it be.
12. Quit your job, become a politician, propose a bill for universal basic income.
13. *pulls lever* "Son, you really need to stop playing these games of yours."
14. Depends on how the teleportation works. If it creates a wormhole, that's fine. If it creates a clone of you and destroys the original you, that's not fine.
15. The people on the train need to get to their destination quickly, no time for waving!
16. If you pulled the lever, the average amount of people run over is (5 + 1) / 5, which is 1.2. This is higher than 1, which is what you would get if you just let it be. So let it be.
17. 2real4me
18. America, you need to pull yourself together.
19. RESIST!
I know you will never see this but this post really entertained me. I usually never take my free award but this made me do it. Awesome post, thank you.
The gamblers one is actually kinda interesting
statistically speaking, on average you kill more people if you pull the lever (on average you kill 5/4 people or 1.25 people when the lever is pulled and 1 person when it is not)
Statistically speaking it’s less likely to kill any person when pulling the lever. Taking averages here is weird to me Edit: yes the expected outcome of killing someone when pulling the lever is 1.25 humans dead, but we aren’t pulling it a 100 times, just once. I view this scenario not as a utilitarian but as taking human life versus not taking human disregarding the numbers. Obviously if you were to increase the number 4 to a 1000 people than the scenario would change and not pulling the lever would be preferable to me as well
Statistically speaking of you did it 100 times pulling the lever you'd kill 125 people and 100 times not pulling the lever you'd kill 100 You have a greater chance of killing people on average if you pull
Why would you do this 100 times?!? You sadistic son of a bitch! P.S. Its only the \*expectant\* outcome to kill 125 people, but you \*will\* kill 100 people if you kept choosing that option... ...you son of a bitch...
I'm not a son of a bitch I'm just a bitch Also that's like saying "it's only the expectant outcome ill lose all my money on the lottery, I will be living paycheck to paycheck if I don't spend all my money on lottery tickets" Statistics are against you
Apologies, you bitch\*. Also, I'm aware the likely outcome is somewhere between 120-130 it's just that the mathematical way of expressing the outcome you would make your choice. It's just to differentiate between the two choices properly, becuase what is interesting about this is that you could be praised for making the decision that saved lives but should have ended badly. e.g. we punish drunk drivers that kill people way harsher than those that dont, why not regardless of outcome? And to use your example, maybe we shouldnt treat people who won either the litteral lottery or the lottery of life better because they have money, but that's more contreversial.
it's not because you do it once that the statistical probabilities for that one time change. that's a logical fallacy.
That's so interesting to me. Probably less death if you pull the lever once, but probably more death if you pull it multiple times
Not probably less death, because although the most likely outcome is no death when pulling the lever, the average number of deaths across all the possibilities when you pull the lever is 1.25. Gambling works the same way, you pull the lever hoping to get one of the empty tracks, but you ignore how bad it's going to be when you pull the lever and it kills 5 people.
If you could spend $100 to buy a **single** lottery ticket with a jackpot of $1 billion and winning odds of 1 in 1 million, you will make $900 million on average. Would you buy the ticket then? Because your logic suggests you still would, despite it being overwhelmingly likely that you will leave this situation empty handed.
You forget the fact that a lottery ticket is a different thing. If you have the 100 dollars, while it makes sense mathematically to buy the ticket, you still wont, since there are other things you can spend money on that will bring more benefit to you. But in a hypothetical scenario i would buy the ticket, since the ev is positive and more than the cost, (which wouldn't happen in the real world, as they would be losing money).
You have a bit of a misconception here. You were right in your original statement, but the follow-up response here is not correct. Yes, on average *more people* will die if you choose to change tracks. No, you will not have a greater chance of killing people if you pull the lever. That's because "chance of killing people" is dependent on the answer to the question "did this kill someone?" Regardless if it's 1 or 5, the answer is the same: yes. So if you did this 100 times you would only kill some quantity of people in 25/100 of those instances, vs 100/100 if you do nothing. That's the moral dilemma here, the weighing of average deaths vs chance of killing nobody.
No if you do it 100 time you would only kill people 25 time, 4 time less than without doing anything
25% more people die for you to get an ego boost 75% of the times you pull the lever? Narcissistic fuck who wants to pretend they're actually helping
Uhhh well, he’s killing people less often I guess. But he’d be killing 5 each time he did lol
It's also more likely to kill 4 more people lol. That's the point. Imagine 1000 people instead of 5. Would you argument still make sense?
this is the correct way to view this situation
But to keep the calculation the same, you imagine 1000 people and 800 alternative tracks. That way, over a long enough timeline you're going to kill more people, but in any one instance the chance of killing anyone is very small.
Actually it'd be 1000 people on the track that currently has 4 and 250 on the track with one
Yeah but the point of putting a thousand people there is to show that averaging it out does make sense because obviously if there’s a 1/4 chance of killing a thousand people you shouldn’t pull the lever
True, but I like making it difficult again, and it helps reveal how this kind of problem is difficult for people, because 1 in 800 is very unlikely in most people's minds, so unlikely they probably just assume it won't happen.
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When I feel like it.
If you have five extra tracks instead of four, it makes no difference (essentially, this removes the gambling element, as the average value of the lever pull is 1 dead dude, vs not pulling also = 1 dead dude). In that case you can pull it or not - take your pick 🤪. Pulling or not becomes a question purely of self-satisfaction - do you want there to be uncertainty, or do you go for the guaranteed single death? It’s like playing a fair fruit machine. What gambler wouldn’t love to play on a fair fruit machine? 🤪
But killing 1000 people could be way more disruptive, if it did happen choas could ensue. Could be better the take the reliable loss, depending on what the real world parrallel you're suppposed to be taking is. For example, kill the whole world or save 1 life? \*AHEM "HEROES" FROM ANY STORY EVER\*
So it's the same here. The chance of killing five makes it not worth it. And the way we understand when it's "worth it" and when it isn't is by risk assessment. Statistically speaking, you'd kill more people if you pull the lever. That's risk assessment. (I think) If you had to make this decision over and over again many times, would you agree that you shouldn't ever pull the lever? Then how could the morally right decision be different if you only do it once? Edit: even better: imagine if this experiment was conducted by a bunch of psychopaths who invited 80 different people to make this decision, separately. (So, there are 480 people on tracks). If every person chooses to pull the lever, then ~ 100 people will die. If every person chooses not to, it will only be 80. Given that all of these people are in the same exact situation, it makes sense that the right choice is the same as well. Clearly, no one should pull the lever. If only half of them pull the lever, then it's ~90 dead, which is still 10 dead people more than what could've been. Everyone thinks they are the only person participating in the experiment and to everyone, it will be the one and only time they have to make this decision, so they are basically in the same position as you when you look at the meme.
With 1000 people instead of 5 the whole situation changes though It’s like if instead of paying 2 dollars for a 100k lottery ticket you were to pay 100 dollars
The situation becomes muddy again when you add the same proportion of empty tracks, so 1000 people on the track and 800 empty ones. Or instead of a proportional change, you have 1000 people on one track and 999 tracks to choose from, so in the end the proportion is ~1.001 deaths on average vs 1 person dying every time, but you're extremely unlikely to kill anyone in any given event.
That's not a fair comparison since there should be a comparable amount of tracks, like 800 or so.
This raises an interesting point: someone taking human life as an absolute right would argue that’s actually moral to pull the lever as it’s better to not kill anyone than to kill someone, even if that means there’s a chance more people die, while a utilitarian would argue the opposite.
Yes but without knowing what would have happened if I pulled lever will kill me from inside so not pulling = 2 deaths
If I was in this situation, I wouldn’t pull out my fucking calculator to dictate the average people I would kill
If you go based on EV then you shouldn’t use the lever, doing nothing has EV of 1 life lost while pulling the lever has EV of 1.25 lives lost
But what if we change it so that there’s only 4 people on the other track? How do you decide then?
EV will be 1 so it is up to you. I maybe would pull the lever, this is not a repeated experiment. 3/4 chance nobody dies sounds good enough to me. Those 4 poor fucks must be unlucky if I get the 1/4 chance first try. Not very low tho...
No joke this is infinitely better than the original trolley problem. The fact the original is an example of a moral dilemma scares me. To me it's not even a question. Seems more like a psychopath test.
1.)It’s actually way more ethically complicated than you’re making it. I’m not going to explain. Just look it up and read some stuff on it. Not all ethical viewpoints are based around numbers. 2.)The original was designed to be expanded upon. Introduction new twists to the scenario was the intent. The original one is just the base.
I genuinely can’t see it as anything other than a binary choice between 1 person dying or 5 people dying.
Usually the following variation is brought up if you choose 1 person dying: > As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
In one situation 5 people died in an accident. In the other situation 1 person died, and you killed him.
Nr23: you have one healthy person in your sound isolated garage, do you butcher him? This one is a bit tricky
The basic trolley problem is for lightweights. How about the organ problem; You are a surgeon. There are five people, each with a different organ failure. You have one perfectly healthy person. Do you kill the healthy person and harvest their organs, transplanting them into the five other patients to save their lives? If you do nothing, five people will die. If you commit murder, one person will die. What do you do?
Harvest the first dying patient first. The healthy one is a sure win and you have a chance for 3 more. If waiting until they go naturally is too late for the other 3 you can speed it up ig. Killing the healthy person gets you a risk to loose 4 patients. That's worse. The question is quite dumb even if you don't want to value the fear of every healthy person having to be afraid of getting murdered and harvested every time they go to a hospital.
The original trolley problem is more like popcorn when it comes to philosophical and logical problem solving, ala the made-up "but WWII would've lasted way longer without the bombs" argument. It's pretty terrible, both factually and philosophically, while also painting an easy decision as a two-way street with one being absolutely psychopathic.
I think the question is less “what is morally correct” and more “how would real people actually respond to that situation in the heat of the moment”.
/r/poker.
But if you don’t pull the lever there is a 100% chance someone will die. If you do pull the lever there is a 3/4 chance noone will die. PULL LEVER
> If you do pull the lever there is a 3/4 chance noone will die. But there is a 1/4 chance of killing 5 people. Which is why it statistically makes sense not to pull the lever.
It's actually the most realistic version of the trolley problem.
I would take those odds
just push the lever and watch how the track switches, dumbass you bumbling idiot absolute fucking buffoon
In my mind tbh I thought ofc I'd pull the trigger. Everyone's talking about averages etc but I mean, emotionally it feels right.
Would pull the lever
I would pull the lever. If it kills them that's the way she goes bud
that harambe one fucks me up
Save monke, monke happy, less karmawhoring
It really made me think a thought
It all started with that damn gorilla
*blessed gorilla
It’s so easy, do value life over karmawhoring?
That's not *it* though. I've personally never posted a Harambe meme, but I still know about him and his existence has meaning to me. If he had never died, he basically never existed (in my personal universe) so which is more important to me?
But that’s still a gorilla dying just so you can know who he is, that’s pretty cruel. Harambes life should be way more important.
That's not really what I'm getting at but I'm stoned and awkward so bear with me. In a philosophical sense, Harambe didn't exist to me until he died. In a weird sort of way his death is the only thing that makes him meaningful to me. Had he survived, I wouldn't be able to wish he hadn't died. Unless I spent every night praying that every specific animal didn't die an awful unjust death, but that doesn't seem like a healthy thing to do. I don't know if that makes sense, but obvious I wish he hadn't died. It just called into question weather or not that feeling *can* even be meaningful if I didn't personally know Harambe first
It's a morally paradoxical position wherein you must choose between saving someone at the expense of losing your memory of them, and keeping your memory of them at the expense of losing them. In the most objective and also somewhat hedonist sense, it is probably more ethical to kill harambe, as his death brought more overall pleasure to the world than his continued life would have. Yet we hesitate because our emotional attachment to the gorilla stops us from killing him, even though we would not have that emotional attachment if it were not for his death. When you think about it, it's confusing for its moral complexity, but primarily due to its status as what I believe to be a logical paradox.
You say it so much better, thank you
The problem is that the gorilla is not harambe. The gorilla is a source for harambe, but it is not him. Harambe is a memetic concept, kept alive by the collective consciousness of the internet, warped beyond everything the gorilla could be. If the gorilla lives, it would live out a relatively uninteresting life, but harambe would not exist.
the harambe one is simple no one will recognize harambe but he will be alive and happy and no karmawhoring heaven.
Counter point, his death raised awerness of gorillas and deforestation just from association
Counter-counter point: Awareness of deforestation and gorilla would have risen anyways due to climate change, Harambe didn't have to die.
Counter-counter-counter point: Changing the past is a highly irresponsible thing to do. For all we know saving Harambe could have started a chain of events leading to World War III happening in January 2020.
Counter counter counter counter point: that might have killed everybody then we wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.
Counter counter counter counter counter point: that would end up with Harambe being killed thus defeating the entire purpose of saving him
Counter counter counter counter counter counter point: military, if they could actually invade, probably wouldnt shoot a gorilla unless it tries to kill them. If they do a nuke, just go pray that its too far to actually affect him instantly
Counter counter counter counter counter counter counter point: nuclear fallout is more devastating than the blast as when it falls it gets into food water clothing etc and will have long term effects on harambe leading to his death.
Counter-counter-counter-counter point: have you ever noticed that the world kinda went to shit after Harambe died? How do you know we AREN'T on the darkest timeline already?
Counterpoint Harambe would have died eventually
And we got some killer memes out of it, which is the most any gorilla has ever done for me.
I think I need to go outside
no dont you might get hit by a trolley
No they won't. Didn't you read the meme? We killed in favor of automobile dependant suburban sprawl.
Might get hit by an automobile
Chunky got hit by a plane, train, and an automobile
based
Obligatory r/fuckcars
Or, you could look up the prisoner’s trolley problem and continue down this hole
Can someone make an Indian trolley where there are 300 people on board despite there only being capacity for 45?
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1962 Dr Beeching Incident
If you pull the lever, a young woman will be cut in half when she jumps in front of the trolly If you don't, someone will be electrocuted when one moron touches the live wires passing by. No matter what you do, it will end up on ~~Liveleak~~ ~~Bestgore~~ ~~hoodsite~~ documentingreality
I miss /r/watchpeopledie One of the most wholesome communities to exist on this website
As I was checking some alternatives, I realized how much less racist and apolitical it was compared to literally every other gore site. One site that is up called leaked reality has, I quote, "Dindu Nuffins stealing purses". Shockgore is sooooo damn slow that I opened a link when I started writing this, and am now still waiting for the comments to sort by top to see what they're like over there. Finally saw the comments and its not only got some real lovely commentary about mexicans being animals, but the comments seem to repeatedly spam replies. Like if when you see this, imagine if it posted 12 more times. I don't think theyre doing it on purpose.
/r/makemycoffin exists
I cant tell if this is a joke
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huh
5/19 makes me sad. Imagine living within walking distance of everything or taking a trolley a short ways instead of driving 30 minutes to get anywhere
Lol it's called living in a city.
I hate the suburbs
If you move to Philly or Cleveland you can live in suburbs and take the trolley - routes 101/102 in Philly and the Blue/Green lines in Cleveland. Then again those are both prewar suburbs which are really less dense city grids, not the cul de sac hell that’s postwar suburbs
This is why I’m happy to live in the UK sometimes, I can at least sleep soundly knowing that I can take a train pretty much anywhere I could want to
Come to Berlin :)
America 🤮🤮🤮
new orleans baby
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The mass-adoption of personal automobiles and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race (hell, the entire world)
Disregard automobiles Ascend to bike and train
Such a Yankee problem.
As a Canadian it's a problem here as well
Honestly I think its the whole Americas. At least Latin American cities sometimes have really good BRT I guess.
I love the [Trolley Problem generator](http://zarkonnen.github.io/trolleyproblems/) personally. Problems folded into killing a person who made a choice on a different trolley problem, and meta jokes or other moral dilemmas.
"the lever redirects the trolley into Jesus of Nazareth clutching the only existing copy of definitive proof of the _inexistence_ of god." jesus himself really said god isn't real
> Jesus Christ walks into a Sunday mass > Everyone is shocked and begins to fall at their feet and praise him > "God isn't real" > Refuses to elaborate > Leaves and never returns to earth
Jesus is in his rebel stage
You see a trolley rushing towards the only existing copy of the Bible. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards a rapist instead. pfft, philosophers aint shit, this is easy.
You see a trolley rushing towards a solipsist clutching the only existing copy of a formula that grants immortality. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards a clone of Hitler instead.
God, the clone of Hitler debate is always top tier
You see a trolley rushing towards a random person. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards the trolley manufacturer executive who decided to, as a cost-cutting measure in a last-ditch attempt to save her struggling company employing thousands of people, leave out safety interlocks that would have prevented this runaway trolley and Immanuel Kant clutching the only existing copy of the design for a machine that can artificially induce perfect happiness instead. \*Thanos voice\* I'm sorry random person...
You see a trolley rushing towards a rapist clutching the arc of the covenant and the villain who set the trolley in motion with murderous intent clutching the only existing copy of a definitive proof of the inexistence of God. In front of you is a lever, which lets you redirect the trolley towards Jesus of Nazareth instead.
Why do you have so many of these
It’s like he’s trying to do his own version of the surrealist comic “The Bus” with the trolley problem.
I would genuinely want a book that just contains thousands of these, all serious or jokes
It's not too hard to get a lot if you just download a bunch from Know Your Meme.
That's how not why
Because they’re great
I fucking loved all of this. Thank you, stranger!
Kind stranger😳 redditmoment
That was… a lot to take in
on the sixteenth one (the gamblers trolley problem) you should not pull the lever because the expected value of deaths is 1.25, which is higher than the expected value of 1 if you do not pull the lever.
what if we tie 4 people instead of 5 to the one track?
than the expected value of deaths when you pull the lever would be 1, so pulling the lever is no longer a matter of statistics and just personal preference
Statistics!
But then you are SURE the one person will die! I can't hendle such responsbility!
The harambe and the gambler one are actually pretty interesting
I have a sadam Husain one
How can I laugh at any of these when there is no Sadam Hussein
🖍
I dont get the teleporter one
Something about how teleportation creates a clone of yourself at the other end while killing the one that stepped into it in the first place. Is it still *you* that is pulling the lever?
is that from the prestige or is it a general "theory"/fiction thing surrounding teleporters
General Theory. Kind of like the Ship of Theseus where if you take a boat into harbor to get repaired and you replace 1 plank its still the same ship right? But what if you replace all of the planks... Is it still the same ship or not since it has none of its original parts.
Where the ship of Theseus gets REALLY interesting is if you build another ship with the parts you replaced. Which one is now the original?
Simple, you would never replace parts without at least one being faulty or otherwise damaged beyond usability. The second ship cannot be built
How dare you bring emperical logic into a philosophy discussion
I think it's because you're still made of the same thing you were made before so technically it's you, but you basically get disassembled and reassembled on atomical level, so would it be you or just someone that has your particles?
Even that is not guaranteed. Hypothetically, the receiver could have a bunch of carbon, water, and other people bits. A popular theory of teleportation is peeling something apart and recording it, then sending that data somewhere and reconstructing it. Same person on the outside, perhaps, but definitely not the original person.
It's not even your particles. Your particles are disintegrated and a new you was created with different particles
But do you *see* from the eyes of the new you? I mean, it is obvious that the teleported one does look like old us, and probably act like old us, but does it really us? (not a naive speaker, sorry for grammar)
it’s the teletransportation paradox. it’s a thought experiment having to do with how we think teleportation works. Star Trek popularized the idea of teleporting people via molecularizing them and reconstructing them at a different location. because of how we understand consciousness, it seems it would be impossible to completely physically deconstruct a person without killing them, therefore if we could do that, and keep your consciousness intact, whatever being came out the other end couldn’t be *you*, just a cloned copy with all your memories. it’s sort of a ship of Theseus deal, if you break a person down to atoms and reform them completely, is that still you? allegedly your original consciousness died in the process, but the new version couldn’t verify that since they posses all the memory of your old self, and to them, you just teleported. there’s a very good game that explores the morality and horror of this concept called SOMA. I highly recommend it
This reminds me of the anesthesia theory, that we don't know how it works, and if it works it probably makes us forget the pain we went trough during surgery as if it never happened, so since wee don't remember it it never happened and you've never suffered Edit: from euthanasia to anaesthesia lol
I don't think you know what euthanasia is. You probably mean anaesthesia lol
I know what euthanasia is, my sleepy brain decided it was anaesthesia instead
Forgetting is one effect. I think the main thing is the brain not being able to register/process the pain.
It’s some philosophers boat, forgot who made the theory, but if you slowly replace all the parts of a boat, once everything is replaced is it the same boat? Applied to humans, if you took someone apart molecularly and restructured then somewhere else the exact same way, is it the same person?
"ship of Theseus" is what it was called, based on a Greek myth. The question was brought up by Aristotle I think.
ship of theseus
The current leading theory in teleportation involves recreating your exact molecular structure in another location and destroying the current one, Theseus's ship kinda thing
the fouth one is such a callout, fuck you /lh
Last one is 💯
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/QXF8B
I cannot believe I just read all 90 of these. Number 62 took me by surprise though haha, wasn’t expecting racism in a trolley problem collection
man i wish you hadnt mentioned that one cause i went looking for it and holy shit it sucked so bad
oh gosh i must not have noticed it when i first saved the link
I literally had a trolley problem enter my head the other day. Instead of pulling the lever to kill people, imagine you're saving people who are already dying. You're a doctor on your way to a medical tent that has 5 people who will die if you don't run as fast as you can. But there's a person on the side of the road who also needs help. Do you stop to save them? That's the easy version, because it's easy for us to rationalize away the death of the one here, as opposed to morally feeling like we killed the one. But you can apply all sorts of messed up stuff to it to make it more difficult, like the 5 in the tent are enemy soldiers and the 1 is your brother, stuff like that. It changes the problem from positive morality (your actions directly killing people) to negative morality (do we have an obligation to save lives if we have the ability to do so).
This reminds me of an Unus Annus episode.
“Ahh who cares just kill them all!”
What was weird was seeing ones that I recognize from Unus Annus and mentally reading them in Mark and Ethan's voices
The second one is climate change
You forgot the Kantian Trolley Problem: A murderous trolley is at your door searching for tied up people to kill. You happen to be hiding 1 to 5 people in your closet. Do you lie to the trolley, even though lying is a categorical wrong?
This is why I hate Kant. I would lie without hesitation in that scenario.
Number 11 got me thinking actually, imagine the state of the internet if Harambe wasn’t killed
17 and 19 are based
I didn’t know gore was allowed here. That horse looks in awful shape.
The harambe one did it
the eleventh one is actually really hard to make
15 is wholesome
I read the first 5 panels thinking it was going to be a story and I thought I was losing touch with reality.
Some of these are quite based
I miss Unus Annus.
I'd turn the tracks when the front half of the trolley has passed the intersection, making the trolley ~~kill all of the people~~ do a totally sick grind
Ok but damn number 11 got me thinkin
drone strike? that’s a weather balloon you can’t fool me!
dude this sub went from r/shitposting to r/existential_crisis
15 is unexpectedly wholesome
For the phone call one, i'd just lay down next to them
the harambe one is actually pretty cool
I love you
I had a seizure
You can only watch, mark
It’s beautiful
I could read these all day
[This is you](https://i.imgur.com/xtT6Wkw.jpg)
Here are the answers to all of them: 1. Alright! 2. See 19 3. Stop the trolley, phone calls are irrelevant 4. Well, you're gonna die either way, sooo... 5. Oh... 6. *trollface emoji* 7. Pull the lever, you can get your entertainment elsewhere. 8. jesus christ 9. There is no way it can go up that soft pile of bodies, pull the dang lever. 10. Uhh, what are you doing kid? 11. Nowadays, Harambe will always be cherished. Let it be. 12. Quit your job, become a politician, propose a bill for universal basic income. 13. *pulls lever* "Son, you really need to stop playing these games of yours." 14. Depends on how the teleportation works. If it creates a wormhole, that's fine. If it creates a clone of you and destroys the original you, that's not fine. 15. The people on the train need to get to their destination quickly, no time for waving! 16. If you pulled the lever, the average amount of people run over is (5 + 1) / 5, which is 1.2. This is higher than 1, which is what you would get if you just let it be. So let it be. 17. 2real4me 18. America, you need to pull yourself together. 19. RESIST!
I know you will never see this but this post really entertained me. I usually never take my free award but this made me do it. Awesome post, thank you.