The Trolley Problem

Is sacrificing one life to save the lives of many others the best possible outcome? Narrated by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

Do you draw conclusions from how things are to think about how things should be? There might be a gap in your reasoning.

and the animations were created by Cognitive.

[Max-gvbi]

Tokyo drift and get all 6. Make it 7 by jumping in front.

[fensen]

Who's here after watching the video of the toddler picking the guy on the first lane and placing him with the other five on the second lane and calmly run the train over the six people serving equality..

[PatrickClarkin]

The alternative solution is to get the absolutely random dinosaur at :30 seconds to block the trolley.

[dykehusband]

People hesitate to say "I'd push the fat guy" because it's significantly more personal than pulling a lever. When you pull the lever, it's almost as though you're being heroic. You saved 5 innocent people! But when you push an innocent person off a bridge in order to save 6 people, it's not the same. You feel more like a murderer and less like a hero. That innocent fat person had no involvement in working on the tracks at all. It feels harsher - pushing a person off a bridge. You killed someone with your own two hands.

[swektrek]

The Psychology behind this is that switching a lever makes the act of sacrificing one life for five indirect. Pushing the man however, requires touch directly with the one we are sacrificing, and that touch activates a different part of our brain responsible for dealing with emotions.

[angelog.]

why is Charlie Chaplin working on the train in the first place?

[it_Nexus]

Here's what you do, walk away and pretend you never saw anything.

[YmdJcbs]

My school did a debate on this. One person said that he wouldn't do anything, and kill the 5 people. His reasoning was that if you do something, whether that's pulling a lever or pushing someone, you're killing someone intentionally, whether it's done directly, or indirectly. So choosing to do something would make you a murderer, even though pushing someone off a bridge sounds more like a murderer. I thought that his idea was understandable. After the debate, we talked about that this can be referred as a false dichotomy. This trolley problem is a good debate topic.

[raekm]

If they insist on standing on some rails while trains are still operating, there's nothing you can do about that. People are responsible for their own choices

[vicesat]

If they are on the middle of a railway line and they died is pure darwinism.

[ClarkKant]

Guys - there was never any 'solution' to this problem! The point of the exercise is to make us think about the MORALITY of the situation. It's a MORAL dilemma, not a practical one. If your mind immediately goes to "maybe I can shout to them to get off the track!" you're missing the point, and should go check out the amusing cat videos. As members of any society we need to consider situations in which our actions, however well-meaning, have consequences: and we must weigh our moral choices in response to those situations (and in this we might treat action and inaction as equivalent). There isn't meant to be a 'solution' to this problem. It worries me that so many people, when confronted with a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT such as this, are unable to THINK about it and appreciate the moral complexity of the real world to which the example alludes.

Many of the commenters here seem to think that they must come up with a solution. These same people would no doubt propose stealing the cat from the box when Schrödinger isn't looking! Thought experiments seek to distill the essence of a problem, so that we can think about the ways in which we behave in the more complex world around us. For example, one of the interesting facets of the problem is that it forces us to consider notions of action versus inaction, and realize that in many situations, these two apparent opposites are morally equivalent. We make utilitarian decisions all the time - weighing the 'least harm' options. The Trolley Problem forces us to see those consequentialist decisions for what they frequently are: selfish, callous and arbitrary choices based on very little information and made with no real knowledge of what the ramifications might be.

[HamletsUnderstudy]

Thanks for the explanation, Principal Skinner!

[crispyscrpt]

my perspective on the trolley problem is when the question is presented you were chosen as a (hero) that you need to save either 5 people or 1 but what you did not see is you are not a hero becuase it is a choice between you being a witness to an accident or you becoming a murderer. If you switch the leaver you would become a murderer because you are the reason why that single person died but when you do nothing and watch the five people die you just become a witness to an accident.

[rahmanmohd]

There's a kid solve the problem, instead of switching the track, the kid put the one man along with 5 men, and the train kill them all

[DevinShillingtonSkateboarding]

im sure others said the same thing but I'm not going to read a bunch of comments. However, I would do nothing. If I pull the switch, I am causing death. That makes me responsible and will land me jail time. If I do nothing, I am nothing but a witness to a terrible accident.

[tonk]

Man... those illustrations using silent film era stars are spot on. I love it.

[lorderik]

What some people don't realize is that a person's inaction IS action. Simply standing there knowing you could have saved the 5 lives is just as bad as pulling the lever if the number of people on the two tracks were switched.

[Ztenam]

"Help ! A train is going to kill us !"
"What do you want from me ? I can only sing you a song !" (cit.)

[MalluStyleMultiMedia]

Mr. Roger's Neighborhood Trolley taught me the trolley problem since childhood. Now, as an adult, I'm learning the trolley problem at a different level. :)

[backinnam]

People would rather pull a lever over pushing someone for the simple reason that the lever distanced themselves from the outcome: the death is farther away, and you would feel less guilt doing so.

This is the same reason we have internet fights at such a magnitude of animosity towards one another.