What are your guys thoughts regarding the ethical dilemma of the “trolley problem”? I’m sure you’ve all heard it (or some variation) but basically you’re on a trolley and you’re heading toward like 5 people on the track that aren’t going to be able to get out of the way. But before the trolley gets to them you have the opportunity to switch the track, and by diverting it you only kill one person instead of 5. So do you do nothing and more people die or do you actively choose to sacrifice 1 to save 5?
So far, my favorite response is that the trolley problem is really just a bullshit way of exploring or testing one’s morality/ethics bc unless you actually find yourself in that situation for real, you have no way of knowing how you will actually react. When it comes to humans having to choose between 2 choices (and both of them are bad, one is just less bad than the other), the fact is these hypotheticals are pretty meaningless bc when you’re in that situation you would have limited time to evaluate the full merits of those choices and not to mention would be dealing with incomplete information.
Kind of liberating, really. Like rather than trying to take a long hard look in the mirror and deal with the implications of what kind of person you are, it’s a pointless exercise and you shouldn’t waste your time agonizing over it.
