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I think trolley problems are mostly linguistic. Take this wording: "Oh no! A trolley is careening into a crowd! Should I try to turn it so it goes through the

I think trolley problems are mostly linguistic. Take this wording: "Oh no! A trolley is careening into a crowd! Should I try to turn it so it goes through the sparsest part of the crowd?" I think most people — by a wide margin — would say yes, because it's worded as still hitting the same thing, just hitting it in a way that does less damage, and we feel differently about that than hitting a different thing, "this guy" instead of "those guys".

DoughnutHole 4y ago
That's not really just a difference of language, it's a different situation from the base trolley problem. You're describing a realistic situation where the potential outcomes are fuzzy and you're just trying to minimise the probability of damage. The base problem is binary - definitely let 5 people die or definitely deliberately kill 1 person. If you believe the probabilistic and discrete versions of the problem are the same that just means you fall into the utilitarian camp when it comes to this thought experiment, and believe that the outcome is the only thing that matters.