I love this tool so much. It stops so much bad pop philosophy dead in its tracks.

For it to be a problem you need to give a shit about both tracks.

For it to be the trolley problem, you have to make a value judgement between action (hitting the lever) and inaction (letting the trolley roll past).

The original conceit of the problem (trolley hits five people or you move the switch and it hits one person) is about the culpability inherent in personal agency. Mathematically killing one person is better than killing five people. But by switching the trolley, the singular death becomes your fault rather than just some event that's happening beyond your control.

This is the real moral dilemma. All the iterations on the trolley problem - questioning which track has a higher value/need - are a divergence from the original psychological problem of assuming culpability for an existing problem by altering it.

Not always. How many people died digging the Panama canal, or building the Hoover dam? How many ships just fucking sink with all hands each year because the company doesn't give the first two half-flaccid thrusts of an obligatory marital fuck about safety?

Not if we get rid of regulations and vaccines.

The lever be slackin. Let’s get this over and done with

That's ok, guy at the lever and the rest of his buddies are working to accelerate that process

If you're lucky! Many die young from the prioritization of profit over public safety.

Not really.

So like a normal lifespan?

I always thought they were tied *to* the tracks

Honestly, I usually saw this alongside Wile E. Coyote style antics performed by someone literally twirling a mustache, so I was never looking for consistency!

And less charitably, the character tied rarely seemed to do more than protest delicately even when she wasn't tied...

i think what is going on here is making an example. This is not a moral problem with some kind of inevitability. This is an execution that is trying to make a point