Well, that's an age old question in ethics and morality. The trolly problem. One answer/justification is "whichever solution saves more lives", but ultimately the decision costs lives as well. It's not a decision I would make in a slapdash way. I'd at least warn people it was coming and give them a chance to reconsider.
Correct, but my addendum is to just tell the people saying it's a hoax. "You are free to believe that, but if you remain on these tracks, we are going run you over with that train you can see heading your way at about 120mph. Good luck."
It's more like there are people who have tied themselves firmly to the tracks and also to people who do believe in the train and want to get off, but they cannot because they are tied to the train-deniers.
If we could build train wheels that skip over believers and kill only deniers, then I wouldn't even touch the train's brakes, but we can't do that.
Yeah, but that is essentially the problem. Your first thought is, "Why are they on the tracks, why don't they just move, what the hell?" and your ethics prof just says, "they are there and won't move". Thus you could apply any narrative to them that you like to justify when they won't move and technically the one you described would fit the bill.
Except in this case you have one track where people fell on the track and thr other where people purposely jumped on the track saying "there is no trolly". I think if you have to pick a track, this one is rather easy.
Isn't that the trolly problem in a nutshell. When presented, the people are usually stupidly on the tracks and could easily move or just not fucking be on the train tracks. No one seems to point this out.
Most formulations of the trolley problem include some excuse for the people to be on the track. My teachers talked about an evil villain, or some vague, undefined confluence of circumstances. The point of the thought experiment isn't to nitpick details like that, it's to examine what sort of actions you would be okay with morally, and whether you have a consistent justification across formulations. You seem to have missed the point.
I've always either heard the "tied to the tracks" version or the "railroad work crew" version, I dunno what this "vague, undefined confluence of circumstances" version is but it sounds really existential.
"Due to a concatenation of events, six humans' lives have lead up to a moment in which they all find themselves on the tracks ahead of an out of control trolley. Whether or not you pull the lever to switch the track the trolley goes down, can any of us be truly said to have any actual control over the outcome of our existence?"
I think if you have to pick and choose who lives, which we do here, then the lives of the people choosing to endanger everyone else out of selfishness and negligence are worth less than everyone else.
Maybe. We are also throwing up covid tents, so we might not have to actually "choose" between who lives and dies. Instead we choose between who goes in the tents and who gets to go inside, heh
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u/TurboGranny Texas 17d ago edited 17d ago
Well, that's an age old question in ethics and morality. The trolly problem. One answer/justification is "whichever solution saves more lives", but ultimately the decision costs lives as well. It's not a decision I would make in a slapdash way. I'd at least warn people it was coming and give them a chance to reconsider.