The person at the switch has a 100% chance of killing someone, either through omission or commission. Therefore, this person is worse than the prospective victims, who have a 50% or 75% chance of killing someone.

Here is a scenario (it can be adapted) that does a better job of getting at weighing decisions that the trolley scenario:

You are a lifeguard at a beach. You see that two women at opposite ends of the swimming area are both showing signs of serious trouble in deep water. One of them is slim and beautiful, the other one is fat and ugly. You can only help one. Which woman will receive the benefit of your life-saving expertise?

The two swimmers could be white and black, male and female, gay and straight (you observed them before they went into the water; that was your impression), or young and old, etc. You can't save them both, but you can save either one

In this case, the choice requires you to do something good (saving someone from drowning) rather than inevitably doing something bad (causing someone's death).

IN the real world, we are more likely to make a forced choice on whom to save, rather than on whom to kill.

Or, to whom do you give the benefit of the doubt? That's a real life situation that comes up much more often. Do you think someone may have cheated you? Why do you let it pass in one situation and not in another?

Who are you going to save from drowning, Sushi???

Make your own thread and I’ll not answer it.

My question is do you see the issue I may be raising? It appears not if you find your scenario equivalent.

My scenario is a zinger. Yours is just sour grapes.

do you see the issue I may be raising — I like sushi

No, I don't. The fucking trolley has been rolling down the track for years and doesn't get better by being repeated. It's just a no-exit forced choice. Boring!

Whether 1 billion people or 1 or 2 people are supposed to get killed in the forced choice, it has nothing to do with the price of corn in Iowa.

Set up a scenario where someone comes out alive, rather than gets run over, why don't you?

What was your point, by the way?

I am actually asking for an answer here and the reasoning behind it because I wanted to highlight something.

What do you want highlight? (This isn't a personal attack on you; it might feel like it, but it is not. I'm just bored with the trolley problem, and whatever it is supposed to reveal to people.)

I'm not the only one who doesn't seem to be getting whatever it is that you want to reveal.

I say recuse yourself, and the dilemma gets transferred to someone else, perhaps more competent about the value of the people who ought to survive or perish (unlikely).

The person at the switch has a 100% chance of killing someone — Bitter Crank

Correct. Anything else?

In an unusually forceful statement, Wallows is telling me to butt out.

Will do. Meanwhile, Wallows and Sushi are tied to the track on which a trolley approaches at high speed. There is nobody at the switch. What are their last words to the world?

In an unusually forceful statement, Wallows is telling me to butt out. — Bitter Crank

Not whatsoever Bitter Crank. I am saying that you have been cheated if nobody tells you, you can't recuse yourself, which is the choice any sane person ought to do.

I butted out. Sorry, can't hear you.

I butted out. Sorry, can't hear you. — Bitter Crank

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one ought to practice quietism. :blush:

In an unusually forceful statement, Wallows is telling me to butt out. — Bitter Crank

I think the 'yourself' that Wallows recommend recuse themselves was the person at the switch, not you BC.

Oh. Well, it was time for me to go anyway. I had annoyed Sushi long enough.

I say recuse yourself, and the dilemma gets transferred to someone else, perhaps more competent about the value of the people who ought to survive or perish (unlikely). — Wallows

And if you could save an eight year old boy or an eight year old girl from a fire you’d choose neither letting them both die. There is a necessary moral burden in either choice and I’d say a greater one in allowing two people to die instead of one.

The hypothetical in the OP it is set up to trick you. It’s a puzzle which almost everyone is duped by.

The hypothetical in the OP it is set up to trick you. — I like sushi

I don't think it is. It is set up to investigate moral intuitions in relation to consequentialism.

For an utilitarian, there is a simple calculation of the consequences, that you have made slightly more complicated, but not changed the nature of.

But for a Kantian, there is no calculation to be made, because it is always wrong to use a person as a means, in this case of stopping a trolley. In these days where everything is a trade, and everything has a price, it is quite unusual to find a non-consequentialist outside of religion, but still a lot of people feel a certain repugnance for such moral calculations.

Personally, I would say that there is no moral, and no immoral act, because there is no kindness or unkindness involved either way. If you are a calculator, you make your best calculation; if you are an intervener, you make your best intervention; if you are hesitant you let the dice fall where they will. IOW, it is the mind that is guilty or innocent, and the act and its consequences are mere scenery to the passion play.

It depends on whether or not you value human life. You’ve shown you don’t already.

Anyway, you’ve still not answered. You’re right in it doesn’t matter what you choose. It does matter if you choose for the right reason. That is the puzzle.

It depends on whether or not you value human life. You’ve shown you don’t already. — I like sushi

No it doesn't. It depends on whether you think the value of life is calculable, such that more is always better, or that there is some virtue formula whereby the value of lives can be compared. Those of us that don't think that find that the information in the trolley problem is of no use to us. I don't know what I would do, but I would feel bad about whatever I did, because death would be the result.

What do I do? I point out that Bayesian probability is nonsense.

Sounds like you’re leaning toward fatalism here? If someone is on fire do you just go about your business or perhaps try to help them? The scenario isn’t much further away from that.

To everyone:

Is it really hard to grasp that for the purpose of the hypothetical the lives are viewed as equally important? So two people dying is NOT better than ONE or NO people dying?

The alternative is to say no life has any value. That is quite far removed from saying individual lives are difficult to measure against each other as a whole.

Sounds like you’re leaning toward fatalism here? If someone is on fire do you just go about your business or perhaps try to help them? The scenario isn’t much further away from that. — I like sushi

Dude you are reading some very weird shit into what I have said. But normally, when I happen to be passing someone on fire, I find I can wrap them in a blanket or spray them with water without killing anyone else. Have I been doing it wrong all these years? I am fatalist only in the sense that I think everyone dies.

Well dude what is the basic difference between saving one life no lives or three? No difference?

Do the people on the track come with a sticker on their head that says how likely they are to kill someone in their life?

What if the guys on track A are sterile and the guy on track B ends up having 10 children but there is 50% chance one of them is Hitler, who do we pick?

what is the basic difference between saving one life no lives or three? No difference? — I like sushi

The difference is 2 lives, or 3 lives. See? I can do arithmetic. First responders face this sort of situation sometimes:- Several casualties, some in dangerous places, some trapped, some bleeding to death. You can't help everyone, so you do the best you can, and it's not a moral question but a practical one, how you can best spend your time. What to do first - get the pregnant woman out of the burning car, or stem the bleeding of the cyclist she ran over, or perform CPR on the old philosopher whose heart attack caused the accident?

So I want to say that it is moral to treat any of these, and one is not more important morally than another. First responders tend to have a checklist so they don't have to think and choose at the time. The checklist is not a moral ordering. It is not immoral to treat the philosopher because the pregnant woman counts double.

Any chance anyone here is actually going to answer rather than play silly games?

The OP is as it is. I’ve given you as much information as needed. It’s a hypothetical so assume they are humans with exactly the properties I presented. If you wish to add extras move to other thread about allowing one billion to die to save the human race.

And how is that relevant to the OP? The only thing you’ve got to diffrentiate between them is their likelihood of turning bad and killing one person. That’s it, nothing more.

And how is that relevant to the OP? — I like sushi

I've already answered the op with reference to established philosophy, to the effect that there is no moral difference to my mind, between killing one to save two, and killing two to save one. Thereafter, I am defending myself from your rather wild interpretations.

Well the hypothetical doesn't mention how many children they're gonna have, what kind of life their children will have, it doesn't say what a bad life is, or whether it's even possible for everyone to agree on what a bad life may be, it doesn't say whether someone living a bad life might inadvertently save many people through no will of their own (for instance because of his 'bad' actions the guy causes a plane to land to get him arrested but if he hadn't committed these 'bad' actions the plane would have crashed because of some technical failure and killed everyone on board), ...

The fundamental problem is how do you value life? Different people value life differently. Some will see the life of a child as worth more than that of an elderly, or that of a beautiful woman as worth more than that of an ugly one, and some will disagree on what makes a woman beautiful or ugly, ..., in your hypothetical many would make a decision based on what the guys look like.

Then when you say they "both have a 50%" of killing someone, do you mean there's 50% chance one person dies because of the two of them and 50% chance no one dies, or that there is 25% 0 die, 50% 1 dies and 25% 2 die?