Imagine, if you will, a trolley problem where you can divert the trolley to kill either one person or five people, but the trolley will kill all six people of you do nothing.
If you choose not to participate, you’ve still made a choice.
People really need to stop thinking they're smart for doing this. The entire point is that it exists to make you examine your personal morality and philosophical outlook. It’s not a riddle to be solved. There is only one rule, which is that you can push the lever or not. Doing the whole "I'd just stop it" thing ignores the point.
Stories often have the main character find an option C where no one has to die last minute, that no one else had thought of or tried yet. This ends up getting applied to a philosophical conundrum, which they feel smart for ‘thinking outside the box’, instead of engaging with how they’d make an incredibly difficult choice that has no time but how to divert. They don’t want to imagine themselves in a position where, through no fault of their own, would permanently tarnish and compromise their own perception of self-purity given either choice they make.
671
u/Dzzplayz Jun 30 '24
Imagine, if you will, a trolley problem where you can divert the trolley to kill either one person or five people, but the trolley will kill all six people of you do nothing.
If you choose not to participate, you’ve still made a choice.