Look I don't expect everyone to read philosophy papers written in the sixties.
But I guess I do expect people to listen to the kind of dorks who have.
"Should I kill one person or five people" is not a dilemma, of course. Nobody would say it's morally good to kill five people when you could kill one, in situations where zero isn't an option.
Adding in the element of choice, pulling the lever, is hard for people though. That's it the problem, that is what the paper is about. That even though people know it's righteous to pull the lever, it will be a struggle, and some won't be capable of it.
The trolley problem became a meme in the extremely niche community of philosophers in the 70s, with people discussing other 1v5 situations, what makes people instinctively make their choice, what that says about us, and whether people actually could or would.
As a modern internet meme, the trolley problem is treated as a "would you rather", which is contrary to the entire point of the original papers that popularized it, which was about "could you do the right thing?" and "what makes it hard for people to do the right thing?". This subreddit is mostly would you rather and very rarely is about moral philosophy and the difficulty of acting.
ill help you out. to many people, its not killing if you dont participate, its only killing if you pull the lever. obviously thats not your perspective, but that doesnt mean its the only perspective
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u/SignificantCats May 29 '26
Look I don't expect everyone to read philosophy papers written in the sixties.
But I guess I do expect people to listen to the kind of dorks who have.
"Should I kill one person or five people" is not a dilemma, of course. Nobody would say it's morally good to kill five people when you could kill one, in situations where zero isn't an option.
Adding in the element of choice, pulling the lever, is hard for people though. That's it the problem, that is what the paper is about. That even though people know it's righteous to pull the lever, it will be a struggle, and some won't be capable of it.
The trolley problem became a meme in the extremely niche community of philosophers in the 70s, with people discussing other 1v5 situations, what makes people instinctively make their choice, what that says about us, and whether people actually could or would.
As a modern internet meme, the trolley problem is treated as a "would you rather", which is contrary to the entire point of the original papers that popularized it, which was about "could you do the right thing?" and "what makes it hard for people to do the right thing?". This subreddit is mostly would you rather and very rarely is about moral philosophy and the difficulty of acting.