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Trolley Problems (neal.fun)
3 points by squircle 23 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



You can find out which kind of trolley-switching strategy you lean towards.

https://www.agiliq.com/notebook/ethical-framework-trolley/


Should be fun but is just depressing. How about a reverse trolley problem where good things happen? Now that i think of it, this might become the next great life/career planning tool…:)

A moment of reflection: on the positive trolley tool, not being able to pick both good things is its own tragedy (let’s say family and career). But the reverse doesn’t behave the same - the decision to pull the lever for two negative outcomes doesn’t cause me to feel joy that only one of the disasters occurs and not both!


A variant that occurred to me the other day:

You are a Roman citizen at the Colosseum. Godzilla is in the ring. Five gladiators are released to go fight and die. But you can pull a lever to swing the cage door, so that only one person is sent to die instead.

Most likely answer: five gladiators dying is more entertaining than one.

I think there's even more cultural factors to the trolley problem than we usually consider.




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