3 ms·

I think this is a really good point. Definitely makes inaction feel like a choice, which is fundamental to the problem

• wizofaus 4y ago
  I've thought that too, and it's hard to believe you really could convince yourself that your level of responsibility/guilt for the outcome is significantly less in the case you choose not to intervene even when you easily could. If the lever was some distance away (and certainly if other people were just as able to reach it on time) then not running to and pulling it seem to be a less culpable choice.
• Tao3300 4y ago
  Yes. E.g.: I didn't choose to kill the lobsters instead of the cat. I chose not to act. If they'd been switched, the cat would have been greased instead. The statistics are presented after the fact like you had a preference for one over the other, when in most versions of this problem, I was deliberately choosing not to participate. I refuse to be complicit in this evil. I maintain that the real answer to the trolley problem involves an overwhelming personal struggle that is so traumatizing that it transforms the hypothetical subject into a vigilante -- a hero who devotes themselves to carrying out personal justice against the nefarious evil-doers who keep setting up these trolley problems. The problem is the Joker, ergo the solution is Batman. Dismissed!