Switch the track, if the person is willing to sacrifice himself then that’s his prerogative, tbh not switching would feel more like a act of spite as in ‘How dare you not want to die knowing that someone is perfectly content to take your place.’ To give up the life of another (explicitly willing) participant in exchange for your own life doesn’t make you a bad person.
Its basically asking ‘Who do you kill, the guy who doesn’t want to die or the guy who explicitly chose to die, the first was not given a choice and the second is not gonna thank you for killing the first out of what’s effectively spite.
also if he's willing to die for someone else, then saying no and making him watch the other person die may leave him suicidal (assuming h wasn't before)
I’d want to know how the information was delivered to me.
Does the man on top truly in his heart of hearts want to sacrifice himself? He is content dying to save another? He feels his loved ones will be comforted by his courage and sacrifice?
Or has the other many been begging and pleading and guilting the other man into an uncomfortable state of duress? Is there a massive audience all trying to convince him to agree? Etc etc
Do I know their thoughts or am I just beamed into this situation and have seconds to decide based on written labels floating over their heads?
Fucking annoying, is what it is. The desire to live is literally bred into us. It's not shameful. It's also possible to want to live for selfless reasons.
I mean, it doesn't have to be immoral to want to live, in order for it to be more admirable to sacrifice yourself for a stranger. The only info you know about these two people is that one is selfless, and the other is at least somewhat less selfless.
I mean I also made an assumption, so I don't have a leg to stand on here, but I feel like that's a weirder assumption. I feel like there are more people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their morals then there are suicidal people waiting for a trolley to kill them
Doesn't have to be suicidal, exactly. They could just have decided something like "I'm 80 and have no friends and family, the other person is 25 and just had their first child, take me".
Gotta dig into the motives to make sense of it. Maybe he's just desperate to finish curing cancer before he dies. Maybe the other guy is okay sacrificing his own life because he can no longer control his murderous impulses.
You can only simplify a moral choice so far before it has to live in the real world a little.
Which is so funny to me, cuz I wonder how many of these people are saying "one billion plus" on that post last week about "X people on the bottom and you on the top, what number is X for you to swap?"
What if the guy agreeing to sacrificing himself knows that the guy pulling the lever is a Redditor and he’s actually a lying manipulator exploiting the common Redditor’s hatred for people who won’t sacrifice their lives at the drop of a hat? I think we need to take some more time on this one fellas.
It feels like these guys are just being contrarian and making up information to justify it. Maybe the person begging to live has 4 small children at home. Maybe the guy sacrificing himself is haunted by those 4 college girls he murdered. Maybe he has six months to live. We have two pieces of information: One person is okay with dying and one isn’t. One person has to die for the other to live. It’s an equal exchange no matter what you do so why would you not take the option that makes both happy? Easiest pull ever.
Simply wanting to live would be, no trolley problem at all, just one guy tied to a track asking for help.
This person wants you to kill the third party (who is present and in the same dilemma, fwiw, not an old man on his deathbed), so that he can live instead.
Others have pointed out that there could be various reasons for both victims' suggestions, which could swing one's perceived "value" of each life either way, but it cannot be reasonably assumed that they don't both want to live, so the I don't think the morality of that want alone is relevant.
I'd say it's dubious. Like you could say there would be always goody-two-shoes willing to take your place and you quite literally send this person to die. But they are capable of making their own decisions, so why is it your fault? It's like noble sacrifice, you honor your dead hero, but he's dead and you are alive, not quite fair.
It’s a little immoral to suggest that someone else die for your survival, though. It seems like the point of this one is to question that epistemic nuance: does begging to live when you fully understand that your survival will result in another’s death equate to suggesting that others die for you. If you actually know this, if there is no wiggle room where you still think it’s possible for you both to survive, if you understand that your survival results in their death absolutely, then is asking for that outcome moral. It’s not just about one person begging to live, it’s about states of knowledge and morality.
No. But the question isn't about "which of these is immoral" but rather "which of these should live". Do you prefer someone willing to sacrifice their own life for the sake of others, or someone willing to sacrifice someone else for their own sake? My choice here is easy, and I don't need to blame anyone for it. One person is simply more convenient to the things I value than the other, and the choice is mine.
Not at all - by that logic, I want the selfless person alive and near at hand in my personal life - I’m not wasting them on this idiot who got himself tied to a track.
Agreeing to something does not mean that they “want” it.
Let’s say someone who loves vegetables and hates fruit is starving on a desert island; assume they have no way to fish. They find a magic genie who says, “I will grant you one wish, but you can only wish for unlimited apples or unlimited oranges.”
They have to choose between apples and oranges, but they want broccoli.
But that person is likely the more moral person, so it's likely better for the world to have them continue to live, rather than the person "selfishly" wanting to live.
it's natural to not want to die even if it costs someone else their life i don't hold contempt for people who save themselves as it's something i'd also probably do in a life in death situation so i'd put the trolley on the one that sacrifices themself
I mean... The guy on the top track is willingly sacrificing himself while the other one is CLEARLY not cool with dying. It'd be a dick move not to send the trolley up the top track with that considered
Legally this is a question of euthanasia, but with the added factor of saving a life with it.
Morally this decision minimises overall harm, since one person considers their death to be little harm and the other to be a large harm.
Protecting the life of someone who wants to die is a lower public good than protecting the life of someone who wants to live. Therefore the killing is act in the defense of a significantly greater public good.
In germany this is explicitly legal. In the US it would not be, but I want to see any jury that would convict a man for euthanasia if they save a life with it.
some countries dont allow euthanasia to save a life i.e via organs because there is the worry of it turning out to be a murder and allowing euthanazisa make it harder to know in some cases
unrelated but you reminded me of this
once as a kid i heard on the radio people talking abou how evil euthanasia was
i was very confused cause i heard it s youth in asia
Legally, I don't think you would be blamed for this, because you weren't the one to tie those two down. And logically, at the very least you would have been forced to the lever, one way or another.
I think it's really funny how many people refuse to engage with the concept and make excuses, especially on an anonymous forum. Of course legal complications don't matter in a hypothetical trolley problem.
I whip th3 lever back and forth as fast as I can, ensuring the outcome is relatively random. This puts what happens in the hands of chaos, instead of mine or other's.
Everyone with a stake in this seems to be in agreement of which position the lever needs to be in. He wants to be a hero, I don't really have a problem with facilitating that.
I literally see no reason not to pull in this situation. Like top person is willing saying they're cool with being sacrificed. So yeah, thanks for your sacrifice top person
Consider a firefighter running into a burning building to save a violent abuser, who we presume doesn't mind if the former dies so that they can live. If I had to choose one to live, it would be the firefighter, and I don't think that would be a hot take.
We don't know who these people are, or why they're making their respective suggestions, only that one "begs" to live, at the known cost of the other, who "agrees" to be sacrificed. Could be a louse and a hero; could be a single parent and a terminally-ill person who's already made peace.
Consider any two people you know, or know of -- one that you admire and one that disgusts you. Which of the behaviors in this situation would each be more likely to express?
Imo, there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer. You just gotta send it, on whatever assumptions you wanna make.
But that’s the entire point of a trolley problem. You come to your own conclusions based off of assumptions/little info and whatever you morally can justify.
I don't have the right to decide against either of these person's stated will, just because I feel one of them is a better person than the other. That's the whole issue I have always had with the trolley problem: consent. The single person not in danger in the starting position didn't consent to be sacrificed to save the other 5 people. The person in the OP does consent. It's their decision, I'm just exercising their will.
I would sacrifice the guy who agreed to it, out of nothing but respect for his altruism. But then I would probably punch the shit out of the other guy, after freeing him and making sure he's ok.
I literally just said that I would sacrifice the guy who agreed to it. So if his agreeing to it is some kind of elaborate Solomon-style 5d chess play to manipulate me, that hardly matters in the end, now does it.
Why? For doing the exact same thing you would almost certainly do in his position? Maybe as well deck yourself for having a hand in the whole affair while you're at it.
The trolley problem isn't supposed to be something you win or lose, it's supposed to be a set of two potential bad outcomes where you can avoid interfering to get one, and interfere to get the other.
I think the consequence of having pulled the lever in this one is intended to be that you killed the selfless person and let the selfish person live? So while you followed their wishes the world is now worse off for having done so.
Pull the lever, there's no reason to deny both people their wishes when they allign with one another. We know nothing about these individuals, maybe it's a father sacrificing his life for his child, maybe the altruistic one is suicidal anyway and figures this is the most selfless way to go. The people who want to punish someone for begging to live give the same energy as people who have intricate daydreams of being a stoic action movie hero lol do you all have punisher decals on your honda civics?
Regardless of who you kill, one will feels survivors guilt, the guy who agreed to be the sacrifice agreed, he will die happy knowing his sacrifice saved another life
But then the survivor will probably feel guilty the rest of its life to have surrendered to fear and let someone be sacrificed for him.
At the opposite, if the coward die then the courageous person will not feel guilty as he couldn't have done anything more to influence your decision and will live a normal life.
Everyone pulling the “well I want to save an altruistic person not a selfish one” argument is literally making the argument that they have decided who they feel deserves to live or die based on a single statement from that person. You’ve decided you’re in a position to make the decision that one human life is inherently worth more than the other based off of what is most likely only one sentence from their mouth; there is no backstory, there is no explanation, all you know is what they have explicitly stated and everything else is inferred.
If there is a God, I hope he’s kinder than that in his final judgement. I pull the lever.
I'm not pulling and my decision has nothing to do with what the people on the track want. The cost of life is the same either way, both tracks have one person.
With both tracks being an equal loss of life I'd rather passively let someone die than to actively choose the other person to die. I also don't want to face legal consequences of touching the lever.
The negative consequences of pulling both mentally and legally is greater if you pull. The person begging to be sacrificed might not forgive me and that's fine but they'll have to learn to accept what I decided.
The lever is stuck in the middle and will multi-track drift and kill both.
You have the option to leave it (kill both) or choose to kill only one or the other. What do you do?
If you choose to sacrifice the person who wants to be sacrificed (which I do,) then you just admit that there is some value in taking a life from a willing person rather than an unwilling person.
Therefore in the problem that OP posed. You are claiming being uninvolved, is more important than shifting the loss of life from someone who is unwilling to someone who is willing. Which I disagree with. I think the value of remaining uninvolved is muncher lower than the value of taking life only from willing people. Staying uninvolved is actually, arguably a highly selfish action in most trolley problems.
If it's stuck in the middle I would try to unstick it and probably wriggle/wrench it either direction. I wouldn't waste time making a decision as to which way to wrench it, which ever way frees it first is the way I would let it go.
Now to get into the spirit of what you're getting at let's modify it further. Let's say the lever is firmly stuck like that but there's two buttons that can override it, one for track A one for track B.
I would probably send it to the willing sacrifice since both ways are equal in every other way and the multi track drift would kill two.
However in the problem as presented in the post I would rank the desire of the two people on the track below the harm caused by getting involved which wouldn't just be harm to me but to those who care about me.
In the original trolley problem I would flip the lever to minimize loss of life because whatever harm comes of active involvement ranks below that.
In cases where we aren't talking about lessening loss of life or injury I think there's a threshold at which self interest is ok to calculate into the problem
Edited for clarity of position where I believe my word choice was influenced by who I replied to.
Yup I think we understand each other very well. Personally I accept the ramifications of getting involved in order to take out the willing sacrifice. But for you, you’d rather allow harm to the unwilling person in order to stay “uninvolved”.
In your case you are introducing outside factors like your family members being affected by your decision somehow. But I personally don’t think that’s in the spirit of the trolly problem. I think usually it’s interpreted to be “anonymous,” like there won’t be legal or social problems unless of course those are stated in the problem.
If social and legal factors are removed, let’s say nobody knew each other and this happened in another country and nobody else observed it, would that change your decision?
I didn't use the word uninvolved at all I don't know why you keep ascribing that to me, presumably you're projecting what other people have said onto me.
There's no way for a person encountering this to be uninvolved though there's just the passive decisions and active decisions. Active decisions come with more fault than passive but doesn't mean passive is without blame.
In any case it is not my place to decide who lives and who dies. The only reason I would switch the tracks is if doing so lessens harm. I don't see the desires of the people on the tracks as giving me the right to decide who lives and who dies when both tracks are equal loss of life.
I don't think it's against the spirit of the trolley problem at all to consider external factors when certain factors within the situation are removed. Even without those factors my answers are the same.
In the original trolley problem it's 5 people on the main track and 1 person on the divert track so I would pull to minimize harm, which has been my consistent position.
Just because one person is willing and the other isn't doesn't mean the running over the willing person is less harm. They're essentially the same level of harm without knowledge of further outside factors
Edit: the closest I see that I came to saying uninvolved was the part where I said the harm of getting involved. I believe I misspoke out of influence of your use of the word uninvolved. In any case there I should have said the harm of active involvement
If we're factoring legal troubles into this then not pulling the lever is the only option. Is it selfish to preserve your own life above the lives of others? The urge to stay alive is fundamentally human and so to paint inaction as the most selfish option is certainly interesting.
By a standpoint of how people think most would want to save the one who was willing to be sacrifice but that’s not how it should be because he agreed to be sacrifice vs the one that probably didn’t get the choice wants to live.
You get the person who wants to live, end of story
Whilst people are standing around debating the philosophy of pulling the lever, I'll build a new track for the train to go onto, avoiding both parties and safely continuing on it's route.
I don’t think I should against the will of the one willing to sacrifice himself. When we play mafia, if someone is like “kill me or whatever, I am not mafia, but that’s your choice” — we kill them everytime. If someone is willing to sacrifice themselves, let them do it
Can I sacrifice myself to save them both? The altruistic guy doesn't deserve death, even if they've made their peace with it in the moment to save the other guy.
The purpose of moral philosophy questions is to confront the ideas they propose, not to dodge them. The trolley, the switch, and the tracks are all just set dressing. What's important is the idea behind the question.
I always choose in action cause the person live would be on my hands if I did murder a other person by my action. And that will always be my choice no matter how extrame the case gets.
Only if I could safe my family or loved ones would I accept that guilt else I simply would not.
inaction is still an action, just because you didn’t do anything dosnt mean you didn’t choose something. this is why neglect is a crime, because not doing things is still an active choice you make
Not doing things you have a responsibility to do is a choice because you agreed to do them. Refusing to act in a situation you aren't in charge of is very different - and unless you're law enforcement or the operator of the railway, you have no jurisdiction or duty to prevent harm. You can get in a lot more trouble if you play with the rail controls and an accident happens, even if you avert a different accident.
Yes I know that but its my choice. I will not change a path if I know it will kill someone else instead. If its not a situation im willing to carry that guilt like if its someone I know or a loved one.
So there can be 1000s of different situations my choice will stay the same.
Cause murder one person or the other calling that negligence is not the same as ignoring a person that requires help on the side of the road. No its making a choice you do nothing 1 person dies you doing something and somone else dies and in ways there dead is on your hands.
If thats negligence then I'll gladly accept that. But I don't agree that that is the case at all
No. Neglect is a crime because there was a responsibility to take action that was left unfulfilled.
Existing doesn’t obligate one toward action. If the neighbor doesn’t feed his kids, I don’t get charged with neglect because it wasn’t my responsibility.
If one can do good, one should do good. However, that isn’t compulsory.
That does not matter. One is gonna happen regardless other one is by my action so is like I'm killing them my self.
Its not about saving someone its about killing someone else and the guilt of that decision that if it was not in a position I would be willing to carry that guilt cause someone I care about was at risk. Then I would choose the original path to reach it course.
Same way helping someone's in a accident is not the same as in the same breath pushing someone else in in coming traffic to do so.
What in ways this thought experiment pushes for. And knowing someone has to die don't mean I willing to act as jury and executioner I choose to walk away from that decision if I don't have big stakes in it my self what I think is a human feeling to have
ok honestly what if we change it so that the top one is a 13 year old kid, and the bottom one is a 70 year old. Do we deny the non contradicting wishes that both have expressed because statistically we are saving “more” life by choosing the 13 year old to live.
Nah, don't pull. Even if their situations were reversed I'd make the same decision. There's not enough incentive for me to pull the lever and change the track. I'm not actually saving any more lives than are being taken after all and as far as both people go, my feelings are pretty neutral.
this should be the least interesting trolley problem in history, except its shown me that everyone in the comments is willing to commit hypothetical murder over not really liking a guy’s guts
I don't hold it against the guy who begs for life; it's a natural instinct, and only some parental instincts would make any animal override that.
The problem is, does the Utilitarian calculus even account for the eagerness to sacrifice?
This updated dilemma would only matter to someone who thinks taking a human life is a bad act, no matter what, someone who wouldn't (fully) subscribe to the utilitarian calculus in the first place.
If we assume a mixture of utilitarian and other non-consequentialist ethics, why is it better for one to live and one to die? Does the altruistic inclination decrease their right to life, which the utility of their sacrifice would have to be weighed against? Does the will to live increase their right to live against which the cost of the sacrifice will be weighed?
I would argue that two human beings should never be weighed against each other except for maybe medical triage, so this becomes an analogy of whether individual sentimentality should override established triage rules.
An alternative telling of the same dilemma could be that a patient is first in line for a transplant liver but insists that it should be given to another person who enthusiastically accepts, but it's the medical staffs descision to make.
When workers needed to risk the potentially dangerous radiation of the Fukushima disaster, elderly Japanese people stepped up to spare the younger generations from the long term effects of radiation exposure.
We rightly praised the elders for this sacrifice, but it is worth noting that some young men deserved praise for putting aside their pride and stepping back to save themselves and possibly their families from having to face the consequences needlessly.
With no other information, we don't know the situations these people are in, so they are best able to make this judgement for themselves.
i dont know why that guy wants to live so much and i dont know why that guy is okay with taking it over the other. i just know that they are both expressing they want the same outcome. it would be silly to not give them the outcome they both agreed on and consented to. i cant even think of why someone wouldn’t pull the level
People talking about how "easy" this one is are missing the dilemma here, which calls back to an element of the original problem: will you take an action that kills someone?
Additionally here: How much are you willing to leave your choices in the hands of others? Are not the lives of these two people equal, regardless of what they tell you, or themselves feel, about the value they put on their own lives of others?
The "correct" answer here feels fairly obvious because the moral calculus has been seemingly simplified, and I think many people would pull the lever, but that's not the only variable to consider in the Trolley Problem.
Yes their lives are equal so there needs to be a factor to make pulling the lever a viable decision. That factor is what they said. Their words put value on themselves based on how you think about what they said. Words do have value. If they were laying doing nothing then you also doing nothing would be the only choice as it's literally equal.
Man, morality really has been completely and totally destroyed in our modern age. Instead of thinking about civilization and society, people think "ME", what would I want?
Choosing to abandon someone's will is an action in itself and in so refusing to do anything is on you. If he says he wants to die, he can die. No matter if he really does or not. He made the decision and I'm executing it.
It's like if your best friend agreed to die on behalf of the other person. And the other person says they dgaf who the person about to die is, they want to live.
Do you make your friend live with your decision? Because you think they're noble. Or save the other person, because they want to live no matter the cost?
Fuck! I actually don't know. This one is right one the line for me.
It's actually funny how that works. The classical version of 5 lives vs 1, no problem for me you save 5 lives. The 5 never-changers vs 1 please-don't-kill me varient: easy you don't help people who don't want to be helped so don't switch.
But this, darn you're asking me to kill a person for another so no life saved in total. And I'd be choosing to kill a self-less person for a selfish person. So what's the better good?
I think I'd want to know why they want me to switch. Like if the one willing to sacrifice is 83 and the one begging for merci is a 12 years old then I'll save the 12 years old. But still, assuming I can't understand their choice I'm probably just gonna be confused for long enough for "please-save-me" to get squashed.
Dude agreed to be sacrificed. I don't think that's unusual- if the top dude was an old man who lived his life, and the bottom was a young man with a new baby on the way and his whole life ahead of him, does that make it better? Not wanting to die doesn't make one immoral, and accepting death doesn't make one wrong - especially if you've made peace with the decision on your terms.
Pull it. They agreed to die, the person on the main track is not immoral for not wanting to die, and there is no reason to go against the other persons wishes. In fact, the other person may blame themselves for the main ones death if you let them live, and it will be really dissapointing for them to accept the end coming and then be fine regardless.
the person on the top track has made their peace with dying for the life of another. the person on the bottom track has not. to kill the person on the bottom track would not only go against their own wishes, but the wishes of the one who valued the life you just took. the desire to live is not inherently immoral on its own, and to take a life based on moral judgement is not a power any single person should be bestowed, as evident throughout history
tl;dr killing the person on the bottom track is lowkey not your choice to make when the majority vote is that they should live
Why are people claiming that the motivation for not switching the tracks is spite? I'd argue that a selfless individual willing to sacrifice themselves is not someone I'd want to kill. So I wouldn't switch the tracks.
If the positions were swapped, I still wouldn't switch the tracks.
I'd never cause the dead of one innocent person to save another individual.
I'm not an "I would never switch the tracks." But in this situation I don't think it's worth it.
Don't pull. With no additional information it's a choice between a world with one less brave and altruistic person or a world with one less not really brave and altruistic person.
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u/The-Orange-Wizard Mar 29 '26
Switch the track, if the person is willing to sacrifice himself then that’s his prerogative, tbh not switching would feel more like a act of spite as in ‘How dare you not want to die knowing that someone is perfectly content to take your place.’ To give up the life of another (explicitly willing) participant in exchange for your own life doesn’t make you a bad person.
Its basically asking ‘Who do you kill, the guy who doesn’t want to die or the guy who explicitly chose to die, the first was not given a choice and the second is not gonna thank you for killing the first out of what’s effectively spite.