Level 1 - one person
Level 2 - the kids
Level 3 - best friend’s mom
Level 4 - cancer cure guy
None of it matters in the long run anyway, so might as well pick the choices that affect you directly. Toughest one in this is the best friend’s mom definitely.
Or, y’know, go with the original version of the trolley problem, where you start with the classic formulation (do you pull the lever?), then move to a new scenario;
“You’re a doctor, working in a hospital that has been cut off from outside resources by a disaster. You have five patients, one in need of a liver, one a heart, one a pair of kidneys, one a set of lungs, and one a pancreas. You have no suitable organs available, and all five patients will die without transplants, but there is a healthy young janitor working in the hospital who, by a stroke of extreme luck, is a compatible donor for all five patients. You could kill the janitor, harvest their organs, and save five people. Should you do it?”
Fascinatingly, almost everyone opts to pull the lever in the first part, but refuses to kill the janitor in the second, even though they are, from a deeply utilitarian perspective, the same choice. Unravelling why we see them as different is where things get really interesting.
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Just answer our increasingly difficult questions.
Trolley problem: One track is one person, the other is 10
Next level
Okay well now the one person is your mom, and the 10 are 1 year olds you don’t know
Next level
Okay the one person is your best friends mom and the 10 are young kids from your immediate or extended family
Next level
Okay the one person would cure cancer tomorrow, and the 10 are friends or family
…
Level 1 - one person Level 2 - the kids Level 3 - best friend’s mom Level 4 - cancer cure guy
None of it matters in the long run anyway, so might as well pick the choices that affect you directly. Toughest one in this is the best friend’s mom definitely.
Or, y’know, go with the original version of the trolley problem, where you start with the classic formulation (do you pull the lever?), then move to a new scenario;
“You’re a doctor, working in a hospital that has been cut off from outside resources by a disaster. You have five patients, one in need of a liver, one a heart, one a pair of kidneys, one a set of lungs, and one a pancreas. You have no suitable organs available, and all five patients will die without transplants, but there is a healthy young janitor working in the hospital who, by a stroke of extreme luck, is a compatible donor for all five patients. You could kill the janitor, harvest their organs, and save five people. Should you do it?”
Fascinatingly, almost everyone opts to pull the lever in the first part, but refuses to kill the janitor in the second, even though they are, from a deeply utilitarian perspective, the same choice. Unravelling why we see them as different is where things get really interesting.
The trolley problem is easy all of these questions are easy