3 ms·

Sacrificing one life for money? Easy, derail the trolley regardless of cargo. Anyway, as philosophical or moral problem, the trolley question just sucks.

• taneq 3y ago
  That's literally the point of the trolley problem. "You can't put a dollar value on human life, or compare the value of different human lives" is the socially accepted 'correct' answer. It's also a polite fiction, and using a mental tool like the trolley problem you can uncover what you and others actually think.
  • hef19898 3y ago
    Reminds me of a scenario that I was asked once in an assessment center (a military one): Ypu are defending a bridge, the last one across the river, the enmy is approaching, refugees are on tje bridge, the enemy crossing would mean the front collapses. What do you do, let the enemy cross or blow the bridge? My, partially smart ass answer: retreat, let tze enemy and refugees cross. Because I don't see a point in killong non-combatants to, maybe, save a situation that was screwed up months ago. Because why am I, without enough forces to hold the bridge, the last obstacle for the enemy before he breaks through? And even if I blew the bridge, I don't take out the enemies engineers, so they will just cross the river elsewhere. Since I didn't fail the assessment, the answer at least wasn't completely wrong I think.
  • michaelt 3y ago
    Eh, the formulation you've proposed doesn't really give people much reason not to derail the train. The moment you start saying "10 million dollars of cargo" people will naturally picture a container full of ipads owned by some trillion-dollar megacorp that won't feel the loss at all, and derail the train.