Congratulations, the trolley has derailed, crashing into the ground between the two groups of tied up people. All the passengers inside the trolley are now dead.
Trolleys are quite slow affairs, like all public transport they happen at the leisurely pace of thevunemployed.
We can presume that all passengers of the trolley would prefer the trolley be stopped in this controlled manner than via a further uncontrolled collision.
Also, since passengers have never been explicitely mentionned in the premise, they do NOT exist. After all, many version of the trolley problen even go so far as to stipulate your kin relationship with the potential victims on the tracks to sway your decision.
If there had been passengers they would have mentionned repeatedly, yet they have not.
No, the only person on the trolley is the conductor, the one person with more responsibility than the switch flipping audience stand-in.
Not suprising, as a lot of scheduled public transportation travels in a state of under-utilization.
And for that reason, controlled derailment is the only moral certainty, as the fact that the trolley has no brakes is the only guaranteed fact universally included in this problem AND ensuring safe operability of the trolley is a universal responsibility of all persons driving a vehicle in public.
This has always been my option. Derail the train, if there is a moral choice it is to do everything you can to stop the trolley and failing that is the only guiltless choice.
If you tried a third option over the two choices given then you can't feel guilty if the third option doesn't work.
Who is forcing you? Now im even more fucking confused? What kind of trolley problem is this.
"if you were standing at the rail switch of a trolly heading towards 4 people, and flipping the switch would divert it killing 1 person. But there was a person behind you holding a gun to your head, telling you to switch it, would you switch it?"
They would only die if it crashed/tipped over. The image says the train would stop safely, so I assume the friction and center of mass are low enough to prevent it from tipping.
"Safe" for the passengers then, but is nobody else truly around that could get hurt by the derailment?
Also, how many tied to the tracks are literally murderers who if not themselves killed in this manner, will go on to kill many more again?
Or did these people - cult members? - have themselves tied to the tracks willingly, wanting that easy death rather than slavery of the continued drudgery of existence?
I faced the Kobayashi Maru, tanked hits with shields down while I beamed over all that could be saved before the stranded ship was destroyed by the enemy.
The whole time I was firing at time scoring multiple hits while I circled and dodged.
Once the rescue operation was terminated, shields were raised to full and I concentrated on the lead ship. It was already heavily damaged and I promptly sent it to pagan klingon hell.
It was glorious. I continued firing at the next ship, the rage of our weapons soon punched a hole where their bridge once was.
As we turned toward the last ship, it had broken off, shamefully fleeing.
We could not pump enough ammunition before it would depart so I took decisive action.
I ordered to ram the enemy ship into its engine section, they were immediately disabled while we suffered crumpling damage to our evacuated fore section.
We pulled back and finished off the last survivor from a distance.
After the battle we scoured the friendly wreck and rescued a few more people as well as some klingon prisoners.
We dematerialized all remaining wreckagr from the areas, no communications made it out during the battle due to our jamming.
With the only witnesses aboard my ship I departed.
A trolley is heading towards 4 people. If you pull the switch, it will be diverted towards 1 person. Also, if you slip the switch by pulling it after the front wheels have passed but before back wheels do, it will probably come to a complete halt before hitting anyone, but there is a 20% chance that you'll fuck up and kill all 5 people. There are exits to the east, north, west, and south.
To the north, you see a quaint downtown district that shows signs of recent renovation, and even more recent sudden collapse. A gastro-brewpub advertises trivia on Tuesdays. There are two bearded men sitting at an outdoor table with their beers, watching in rapt horror as the trolley speeds towards the people bound to the tracks.
Immediately to your south are the trolley tracks. On your left, the tracks diverge, leading towards the desperate, pleading faces of the track-bound.
On the other side of the tracks is an old grain silo preserved by a historical society. It looks freshly painted in white. In the distance, you see a block of slot houses all looking the same.
A woman in designer yoga pants is walking a panicked-looking husky.
On the side of the grain house is the words "OLDE MILL" in four-meter-high block letters. The original silo dates back to the late 1880s when the town was originally founded, before it was absorbed into the greater city metro. There's a memorial plaque at the base, but you can't read it because it's on the other side of the tracks, and also because the speeding tram is in the way.
You expect that they may add a new memorial plaque after today.
The emergency alarms are blaring. There are screams ahead on the track.
You find that your mother has already emptied it and lays sweating against it's metallic surface like some sort of heavily breathing walrus with questionable white stains just around her neckline.
To the north, you see a quaint downtown district that shows signs of recent renovation, and even more recent sudden collapse. A gastro-brewpub advertises trivia on Tuesdays. There are two bearded men sitting at an outdoor table with their beers, watching in rapt horror as the trolley speeds towards the people bound to the tracks.
Look at the wheels to check for bogies. A train or tram without bogies will come to a stop. One with bogies will multi-track drift until the tracks get too far apart.
To the west you see a Flexity streetcar coming down the tracks. It will pass by on your left side in a few seconds. The driver is a middle-aged black woman who, under other circumstances, might remind you of a television chef; at the moment, she looks dour and resigned, like a television chef whose frittata burned.
At the end of the street, there is a grand opening sign for a new fast-casual dim sum restaurant named Dim Sum Kitsch. The sign advertises $5 soup dumplings. There is a faint smell of frying oil coming from that direction.
You walk west to the end of the street. There is a fast-casual dim sum restaurant here, which smells lovely. On the other side of the intersection is a flower shop, but it appears to be closed today. Across the street are trolley tracks, and past that is a dog park. You can go north, south, east, west, or into the restaurant.
You enter the restaurant and, without even looking at the menu, begin ordering at the counter. The cashier, who you imagine is the owner's daughter, is baffled by your perfect Cantonese pronunciation. She responds in English with the price and tells you it will be 12-15 minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, you are sitting at a table holding chopsticks and staring down three steamer baskets of dumplings. The street outside is clogged with ambulances, police, and screaming mourners, but that just means you have the restaurant all to yourself. The owner's daughter replaces your teapot with a fresh pot of oolong.
You enter the restaurant and, without even looking at the menu, begin ordering at the counter. The cashier, who you imagine is the owner's daughter, is baffled by your perfect Cantonese pronunciation. She responds in English with the price and tells you it will be 12-15 minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, you are sitting at a table holding chopsticks and staring down three steamer baskets of dumplings. The street outside is clogged with ambulances, police, and screaming mourners, but that just means you have the restaurant all to yourself. The owner's daughter replaces your teapot with a fresh pot of oolong.
You see a hand-operated railroad switch consisting of a lever, a brightly painted switch signal, and a switch stand. It is connected to a pull rod on the tracks. There is also a remotely controlled switch machine nearby; it appears this manual switch was left in for redundancy. A black and white sign nearby says DO NOT TOUCH.
The train is close enough that you could reach out and touch it, but that would be dangerous.
You reach out totl touch the train. The metal siding of the train is cold and smooth, and the bright, saturated reds and blues painted along it remind you of a cartoon. There is an advertisement for a local law firm speeding past you too quickly to read.
A fifth of a second later, your ring fingertip is caught on the edge of a metal panel and sheared off.
You activate your dark heart, moving so fast that you perceive the train coming to a crawl, then a stop. The sky itself looks dark, the physics of relativity cracking under the strain of your newfound power. Gliding on ink-black wings erupting from each limb, you approach, meet the gaze, then execute each of the track-bound mortals, only processing what your body is doing after you pull your claw out of the chest of your fifth and final victim. By the time the train arrives -- seconds later by the timelines of the weak -- you have already left this town for gorier pastures.
This. On average it's the same number of deaths, but there's also the 80% chance to avoid the guilt of killing anyone. The guilt of killing 5 people is presumably not 5 times worse than the guilt of killing 1 person.
We have 1 person, and 4 persons, since there are five total. But since there is only a 20% chance, we can consider 20% of 5 people, to be the statistical average of one persons. Meaning that statistically, on average, this should do, absolutely nothing.
The gap between the wheels in the trolley in the image is much smaller than the gap between the tracks in the image. Still, depending on the amount of friction of the road surface and the wheels, it could either stop safely, tip over and kill people inside, or keep going and run over everyone. I assume it isn't going that fast though because that turn is very sharp and the trolley would derail itself on that turn if it was going at speed.
