We all know the trolley problem meme; there’s a trolley on the tracks that’s about to run over five people. You can change the tracks so that it only runs over one person. Is it more moral to actively kill one person to save five or not to get involved at all? Like with any meme, people have made plenty of variations. In fact, there’s a whole game that gives you a variety of moral dilemmas to go through: Absurd Trolley Problems. I’m gonna play it and share my thoughts on the more interesting problems. If you don’t want spoilers, play it yourself and come back here. It’s a pretty short game.
For the sake of fairness, I’ll avoid cop out answers. Every deaths I cause is guaranteed and I can’t bring back anyone (or anything) that I kill. They’re dead forever. I can tell jokes, but I still have to make a decision. Let’s get started.
The only jobs I ever had a student jobs. What life savings? But okay, even if I did have a meaningful amount, it would still be heartless of me to let five people die for it. Besides, I can fall back on the generosity of my family members. I don’t know, maybe I would give a different answer if I came from a poor family.
That reminds me; there’s a lot of rich people who use their wealth to avoid the problems us regular people have to deal with. Screw it, I’m running the rich man over out of spite. Why didn’t he pay the rope to untie itself?
I didn’t immediately notice the “Levels of sentience” part, so I assumed the dilemma was, “Would you spare a cute animal over an ugly animal.” Cuteness bias is something we’re all guilty of. For example, pandas are idiots. They have a carnivore’s digestive track, but they eat almost exclusively bamboo. That’s why they’re so lethargic. Despite this terrible lifestyle, we still want to save them because they’re cute.
I’m going off topic. The dilemma is about the levels of sentience. Mammals’ brains are much more developed and complex than crustaceans’. If we’re going to spare human lives over animal lives, than it only makes sense to spare one cat over five lobsters.
This one is just confusing. How do you tie yourself to the track? Do you have the most flexible legs and feet in the world? Then again, it’s not that important in this context. I’m running over the idiots that tied themselves. Even if I saved them, they would probably find some other way to win the Darwin Award.
This is the variant that you often hear. What if the one person was a friend or a family member? Objectively speaking, killing them is still the most ethical choice. Those five people also have friends and families. Imagine all the people who would lose a friend or a family member if you killed them. On the other hand, it’s hard to be objective in this situation. From the comfort of my home, I choose the best friend, but I don’t know what I would do if I was actually in this scenario.
I’m putting these next to each other because the decisions I made in Level 16 did influence the decisions I made in Level 18. For the former, I thought, “If they’re identical clones, they have the same amount of sentience that I do. The most ethical choice is to sacrifice myself.” Two levels later, I was stuck. If I used the “same amount of sentience” argument last time, am I a hypocrite if I run over the robots? In the end, I decided to spare the robots, but this is one of the problems I’m the most conflicted on.
This one is lying by omission. Yes, the trolley is releasing carbon dioxide, but it’s better for the environment if many people use the same vehicle than if everyone drove their own car. Public transport is good for the environment. Destroying the trolley would only hurt it.
“But Bright Side, didn’t you say you wouldn’t resort to cop out answers?”
Fine. If we ignore the fact that people would use a different vehicle, destroying the trolley is a net positive.
As far the system is concerned, I’m no one important. I’m not a politician, a royal, a CEO or anything like that. My “worst enemy” is not important either. They’re the person who stole my bike when I was a kid. I don’t like them, but they don’t deserve to die.
This one requires some math to figure out. If we look at the entire world (because the problem didn’t specify any country, sex or lifestyle), the average life expectancy is around 73 years. If you shorten a random person’s lifespan by 50 years, there’s a good chance that they will either die or be at death’s door. Even if we use the highest possible life expectancy (Hong Kong, 86), the odds are still not in the single person’s favor. Shortening someone’s life by 10 years is still a bad thing, but it’s much better than the other option. At least you still have a few decades of life left.
I’ve seen a lot of people talking about how humanity is doomed and how we only have a few decades left until the apocalypse. I supposed there is a lot of things that could end us: climate change, nuclear war, a giant meteor, etc. I prefer the last one because it’s not our fault.
I can’t say, “Humanity won’t exist in 100 year anyway.” I’d be breaking my own rules. There is a chance that, if the trolley goes through that portal, it would kill some of the last people on Earth, so it's probably better to run over the present day humans. The human race will live on!
And those are all the problems I’m willing to talk about. The whole game consists of 28 levels, so there’s still a lot I haven’t shown you. I hope this gave you something to think about. Just don’t lose any sleep.