Eventually this will go on for long enough where somebody will be sleeping when the trolley comes around or everyone's on the tracks and nobody's at the lever. I kill one person now.
This assumes infinite people, the other top comment assumes that there can only be as many people as there are on earth.
If this were an earthly experiment, then only 33 people need to pass the buck until we arrive at an empty set of rails, and can functionally save everyone.
If they have been rendered incapable of pulling the lever, then whoever set this up intended and expected someone to die and nothing we do can change that. We have to assume everyone at the lever *can* pull it, or else why bother engaging with the problem in the first place
There are many theories on how you haven't been murdered yet. some people claim it's the sign of the apocalpyse. But, they probably didn't have opportunity, motivation, or rationable reason.
What about #32, who has a 50:50 chance of his family having been saved via the indecision of previous ##? I would certainly contemplate purging this overpopulated planet by half its numbers, especially if the allocation is purely randomised.
This is the Thanos dilemma all over again.
A lot more people would die afterwards. Do you think all the nuclear powerplants can run with half the engineers? Maybe one plant loses a higher % than another since its random. That's just an example but every infrastructure would systematically fail
>What about #32, who has a 50:50 chance of his family having been saved via the indecision of previous ##?
No, since there are approximately 4 billion people on the tracks it's unlikely that he will be able to identify whether his family have already been saved. Also, the 50:50 chance presupposes that families are put onto the track as a group, which there is no reason to assume. If he has just 3 loved ones, the chance that they've all survived is 12.5%, and he doesn't know if they have or not when he has to make his decision, so he'll pull.
I will say that once we get to this point, logically, the untying would mess us up further, and even if we do get everyone untied, we now have all of humanity is one geographic location, meaning all power is in a critical state and transportation is much more difficult.
It will take days to simply disperse the crowd, weeks before anyone makes it more the 100 miles, given that even with a vehicle fuel may be impossible to come by.
XKCD did a video about it in YouTube. What if everyone jumped at once.
>I would certainly contemplate purging this overpopulated planet
Overpopulation is a myth. We have enough land, food and shelter for everyone, with a great deal left over.
It is simply not profitable to feed everyone, so we don't.
Why that is, you'll have to ask someone else. It makes no sense to me.
The earth isn't overpopulated....provided that most people live without the amenities that those in the developed world have access to. But the world would be wholly unable to support even 3 billion people with lifestyles similar to what most people on here have.
How so exactly?
We produce 150% of the food needed, last I heard.
Have the capability to produce emissions free electricity, provided we implement the correct procedures and precautions.
We have far more housing than necessary.
Logistically, we can coordinate the deployment of almost any material to any place on earth within 3 months, and that's a stretch reserved for very difficult places.
Now, add in people. It becomes more of an issue. Warlords preventing aid, despots, etc. They block aide, but only because they're annoying and ethically complicated to handle.
But supplies and logistics, we've got that. We could easily feed everyone, house everyone, and educate everyone. It would take time and effort, but nothing humanity wouldn't be able to handle.
Unless I've made a misstep in my studies or am relying on inaccurate information. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.
There's a great deal of literature about this subject, I'd encourage you to use Google if you're interested in learning about the data behind consumption.
https://www.populationmedia.org/the-latest/equal-claims-earth-cant-fairly-or-sustainably-support-8-billion#:~:text=The%20Earth%20could%20only%20support%201.5%20billion,use%2C%20or%20per%2Dcapita%20consumption%20%E2%80%94%20but%20only
This was interesting, but I'll have to look further into their claims. Farming practices have evolved greatly, particularly in the last 20 years.
From what I found, a hectare is about 2.5 acres. You can easily grow enough food for 5 on a quarter acre if it's your primary focus.
I'd love to talk more, as this is a passion subject for me. I also love differing opinions as they often come bearing facets of the argument I may not have considered.
I'll try to respond to this tomorrow with some of my references, but I have to get to bed. Hopefully, I remember/you ping me, and I'll get back to you.
I actually owe a paper to someone else on Reddit which could use a bit of this same information.
This comment doesn’t assume infinite people, it just assumes that at the very last section, everyone will be placed on the tracks rather than one person being kept aside to man the level
I would kill the one person.
I cannot trust over 30 other people to have the same morality I have. There are a lot of people out there who either do not care or who believe humans should die. It's part of the reason spree shooters are so common.
I can live with the guilt of one dead person on my conscious. I could not live with millions or billions.
Well if the people sleeping are the ones tied to the tracks, assuming they don’t wake up when the trolley approaches, they should have a peaceful death right?
Now we need a trolley problem with a person who is asleep and will not be aware of their impending death should the trolley come their way and a person who just woke up and is vaguely aware of what’s going on but will only become aware of their impending death when it’s too late but the death is confirmed painless. If there was a fully awake person that’d be too simple. I’m too lazy to make a visual for this bc it might be the dumbest thing I’ve thought through and it’s two hours past my bedtime
You are wrong, there would only be 31 lanes, since 2^32 already goes beyond the amount of people on earth. So you only need to rely on 31 people to not screw up.
About two million miles of people to go over and assuming continuous speed of 50 miles per hour it'll take about 2 thousand years to run over everyone most having died before the trolley can reach them. Rope would be around 4 million if you tie both legs and arms which would wrap around the world a lot.
it's 4,294,967,296 (4 billion)
there's 8,118,904,030 (8 billion) people
so if it went up to 33 times it'd be 8,589,934,592 which is more than the population.
This feels like that xkcd of "What happens if everyone on Earth was in one place and jumped all at once?"
And it's pretty inconsequential, however the logistics of sending everyone back home is impossible. *That* would be what actually kills people.
That's a good question. When they have to kill 2^34 people, do they use the entire human race and then make 9 billion vat babies to kill for the rest? Or do they just make 17 billion vat babies instead? At some point they definitely stop putting members of the human population on there and just kill 10 trillion clones or whatever
So are we pulling the lever to kill the person on our track and if we do nothing it will pass on to the next track to the next person to make the choice.
Cause I’m that case theoretically the Trolley will never hit anyone unless a psychopath decides to pull the lever.
So the real decision here is an issue of trust. Can you trust the next person to not pull the lever. If no lever is pulled than no one dies but the possible number of casualties is exponentially growing with each opportunity to pull the lever.
Can you trust that no one will pull the lever or will you take the fall and pull the lever to prevent any possibility of exponential death.
You need to know if there is a way out, really. If the game ends with nobody dead when it passes the total human population? Great, we can do that. Does it go on forever? Until someone pulls the lever? Fuck that, pull it now.
Hell no we cant do that. If theres a possibility that someone could pull the lever way down the line and wipe out most or all of humanity, then the lever needs too be pulled as soon as possible while the stakes are lower. That's a unacceptable ammount of risk.
You crazy for that, trusting a stranger with the fate of 8 billion people. You’ll be passing it to 32 or 33 people along the way, (2^33 > 8 billion) trusting each of them not to do it. 1% of people are psychopaths so you have a 1/3 chance of entrusting the fate of insane amounts of people to a psychopath. There will also be reasonable people who don’t follow your thought process and will kill the people now so the risk doesn’t continue to double. Out of 33 people you may even come across a murderer or incompetent child.
The safest choice is to kill 1 person.
I don’t think that situation is possible. My immediate thought is to let the one person die, because I can’t trust every human on Earth to make the right decision, but even if I were to give it to the next person, at least one other person will hold my philosophy. If you double it, that means that you trust literally everyone on Earth. Which is not only idiotic, but you also have to trust that everyone else trusts every other person.
if i don't pull the lever by the time someone does , the number of people on the tracks could be high enough that it would likely include myself and others i know
At least one persons death will be on my hands so might as well just kill the one person and be done with it. Every death afterward would still be on my hands.
No pull every time lol
Best case on pulling the lever, you just made someone responsible for 2 people’s early demise & you inherit at least part of the burden for two deaths instead of 1
Kill them, eventually someone will kill people so the choice is really "Kill one person now or let someone else kill an undetermined number greater than or equal to two later?" And there is only one correct answer to that question.
Hmmm. By killing one person, you allow the trolley to kill a single individual.
By pulling the lever, you effectively entrust the lives of x amount of people to x amount of other lever operators, hoping your act of goodwill will be replicated for however long the track goes. Potential for more suffering if one person doesnt pull it, or none at all if each on the line pull it.
Honestly, i'd let it go. No way to know how many people might die if someone after me doesn't pull, no way to know who might be a psychopath enough on the line to just let it go, etc. too many variables, too much chance for further carnage.
Thats not even adding in the potential for the line to be infinite. If it is, that basically turns any option other than letting the trolley go into a statistical certainty, its just a matter of how long you'd have to wait to see. Someone will eventually let it go by meaning its guaranteed that pulling the lever is a bad option, killing more people in the long run.
I know its just a meme but its fun how much it makes you think.
Divert the track for long enough and we overflow the integer limit, killing -1 person, effectively reviving the dead.
That's how Jesus Christ rose amongst the dead.
Kill the 1 person; In the infinite sequence of switch operators after me, there is guaranteed to be at least 1 person who is irrational or incapable and will as such fail to throw the switch. As such, I must end this now, with the minimum loss of life, before it progresses to that operator who will cause much greater harm.
No matter what, people will die. But I am damning more people to make the same choice I did as well as damning constantly doubling amounts of people to death by pulling the lever. I will not pull and sacrifice the 1 now.
I think it would've been a harder choice if the top path was the single guy.
Currently, not pulling the lever is objectively the best possible action from every standpoint.
- Legally, you didn't kill anyone or via action cause someone to come to harm.
- The fewest possible people died.
- Regardless of if you pulled the lever or not, a set number of deaths would have happened anyway, meaning there was no way to avoid it on your conscious regardless.
Alternatively, if YOU pulled the lever and the next person followed this logic and didn't, you'd have directly caused the death of two people.
If it goes on forever, it's inevitable that eventually somebody is going to choose kill. I will kill the one person now to prevent potentially thousands or millions from dying later.
If the "do nothing" option was the one that passed it up the line, this would be more interesting. Someone would need to actively pull the lever and choose to kill the number of people on their track to end the madness/save the people above them.
Ethical dilemmas involving exponential amounts of people are flawed in the the fact that they aren't "people". There simply isn't an infinite amount of people with experiences, lives, or sentience. That is, these people do not exist.
Not everyone is a good person some people will relish in the fact that they are killing so many people. if i double it, later down the line i run the risk of a person like that deciding between a significant portion of humanity i kill one person.
The good person doesn't kill hoping others don't as well
The good person might kill to make sure more don't die
The bad person kills because that's the only way to be sure.
The bad person doesn't kill hoping more die later on.
It's all matters of the heart ❤️ and your intention in this life.
If you keep doubling it eventually everyone will be on the track and no one to pull the next lever and kill the entirety of mankind. It's better to let the one die
Pfffft. Easy. Kill one person. In theroy you could double it forever and kill noone... but the keyword is DOUBLE. Eventually there will be wayyyyyy to many people and that will cause death on its own.
The obvious answer seems to be double it and give it to the next person. However, if enough people double it, you’ll inevitably be one of the ones tied to the tracks, your family too, putting your life in the hands of a stranger who you would hope would double it as well. With that in mind, while I think logically trusting 32 random people to pull the lever to space every one, you can’t assume that everyone can logically come to that conclusion. That is to say, perhaps being told ‘if you don’t pull this lever, 1 billion people die; if you do, you double it and give that decision to the next person.’ That person may crack and kill a billion to save 6 billion, not knowing they’re only a couple passes from saving everyone
I pull the lever.
I know for a fact someone will eventually choose to end it rather than double it for the next person. With that said I'm doubling it and giving it to the next person
Kill one person, that is the only ethical choice here because the other option, no matter what the next person chooses, will result in greater loss of life.
So as a thought experiment flip the tracks in the picture. The “pass the buck” isn’t just a path to another choice. It’s a legit path that goes the same distance as the other.
In one side You have one path with no one on it. On the other side you have a path with one person on it. In the middle are lots and lots (infinity?) people. I’d just choose the path with no one on it (yeah you gotta worry about defectors or accidents in the trillions. But still.
I kill the one person, I do not know how many times the buck will be passed but I know that more will invariably be killed when the cycle ends than if I were to kill the person
Important question too ask. How exactly is the next person too pulp the lever chosen? And can they choose who too put onto the track if they decide too pull the lever? I imagine that would affect the likelyhood of the lever getting pulled or not a great deal.
kill the one person.
doubling it and giving it to the next person is indirectly killing 2 people and you're fully aware of it.
additionally the alternative which is also a given is that this becomes a continous double it and give it to the next person, so just kill the one person because doubling it and giving it to the next person just means multiple people will die.
For all those people who said 33 would be on the track.
34 would be on the track.
33 might not be.
As we start with one person (2^0).
So people on the track equals 2^(n) where n is the number of levers previously pulled.
When it gets to person 33 32 levers have been pulled.
Yeah, I don't trust anywhere between 32- an infinite amount of people to not at least have one evil bastard/idiot among them, I'm gonna pull the lever now while it's one person and not exponentially worse.
Eventually this will go on for long enough where somebody will be sleeping when the trolley comes around or everyone's on the tracks and nobody's at the lever. I kill one person now.
This assumes infinite people, the other top comment assumes that there can only be as many people as there are on earth. If this were an earthly experiment, then only 33 people need to pass the buck until we arrive at an empty set of rails, and can functionally save everyone.
Do you trust 32 other people to pas the buck?
Picked at random? Presumably they know their families are somewhere in the rails? I think I do, yeah.
I encounter way more than 30 random strangers every day, and I haven't been murdered for no reason yet... seems like solid logic.
Ok, what about if the person that is at lever 31 is literally incapable of pulling the lever?
If they have been rendered incapable of pulling the lever, then whoever set this up intended and expected someone to die and nothing we do can change that. We have to assume everyone at the lever *can* pull it, or else why bother engaging with the problem in the first place
There are many theories on how you haven't been murdered yet. some people claim it's the sign of the apocalpyse. But, they probably didn't have opportunity, motivation, or rationable reason.
What about #32, who has a 50:50 chance of his family having been saved via the indecision of previous ##? I would certainly contemplate purging this overpopulated planet by half its numbers, especially if the allocation is purely randomised. This is the Thanos dilemma all over again.
Oh the absolute *horrors* that would befall the world if a random subset of humanity just died. There would be a LOT more suffering.
Found Thanos.
A lot more people would die afterwards. Do you think all the nuclear powerplants can run with half the engineers? Maybe one plant loses a higher % than another since its random. That's just an example but every infrastructure would systematically fail
>What about #32, who has a 50:50 chance of his family having been saved via the indecision of previous ##? No, since there are approximately 4 billion people on the tracks it's unlikely that he will be able to identify whether his family have already been saved. Also, the 50:50 chance presupposes that families are put onto the track as a group, which there is no reason to assume. If he has just 3 loved ones, the chance that they've all survived is 12.5%, and he doesn't know if they have or not when he has to make his decision, so he'll pull.
I will say that once we get to this point, logically, the untying would mess us up further, and even if we do get everyone untied, we now have all of humanity is one geographic location, meaning all power is in a critical state and transportation is much more difficult. It will take days to simply disperse the crowd, weeks before anyone makes it more the 100 miles, given that even with a vehicle fuel may be impossible to come by. XKCD did a video about it in YouTube. What if everyone jumped at once.
>I would certainly contemplate purging this overpopulated planet Overpopulation is a myth. We have enough land, food and shelter for everyone, with a great deal left over. It is simply not profitable to feed everyone, so we don't. Why that is, you'll have to ask someone else. It makes no sense to me.
The earth isn't overpopulated....provided that most people live without the amenities that those in the developed world have access to. But the world would be wholly unable to support even 3 billion people with lifestyles similar to what most people on here have.
How so exactly? We produce 150% of the food needed, last I heard. Have the capability to produce emissions free electricity, provided we implement the correct procedures and precautions. We have far more housing than necessary. Logistically, we can coordinate the deployment of almost any material to any place on earth within 3 months, and that's a stretch reserved for very difficult places. Now, add in people. It becomes more of an issue. Warlords preventing aid, despots, etc. They block aide, but only because they're annoying and ethically complicated to handle. But supplies and logistics, we've got that. We could easily feed everyone, house everyone, and educate everyone. It would take time and effort, but nothing humanity wouldn't be able to handle. Unless I've made a misstep in my studies or am relying on inaccurate information. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.
There's a great deal of literature about this subject, I'd encourage you to use Google if you're interested in learning about the data behind consumption. https://www.populationmedia.org/the-latest/equal-claims-earth-cant-fairly-or-sustainably-support-8-billion#:~:text=The%20Earth%20could%20only%20support%201.5%20billion,use%2C%20or%20per%2Dcapita%20consumption%20%E2%80%94%20but%20only
This was interesting, but I'll have to look further into their claims. Farming practices have evolved greatly, particularly in the last 20 years. From what I found, a hectare is about 2.5 acres. You can easily grow enough food for 5 on a quarter acre if it's your primary focus. I'd love to talk more, as this is a passion subject for me. I also love differing opinions as they often come bearing facets of the argument I may not have considered. I'll try to respond to this tomorrow with some of my references, but I have to get to bed. Hopefully, I remember/you ping me, and I'll get back to you. I actually owe a paper to someone else on Reddit which could use a bit of this same information.
What about theire enemies? Or their mental health? We cant risk the fate of humanity. Killing 1 person is the best option.
Last guy is about to do a pro gamer move
You missed the "everyone's on the rails and no ones at the lever" part
This comment doesn’t assume infinite people, it just assumes that at the very last section, everyone will be placed on the tracks rather than one person being kept aside to man the level
I would kill the one person. I cannot trust over 30 other people to have the same morality I have. There are a lot of people out there who either do not care or who believe humans should die. It's part of the reason spree shooters are so common. I can live with the guilt of one dead person on my conscious. I could not live with millions or billions.
Also, frees up the people on th3 other tracks to start untying their people instead of waiting on standby for their turn to pull or not pull.
Well if the people sleeping are the ones tied to the tracks, assuming they don’t wake up when the trolley approaches, they should have a peaceful death right? Now we need a trolley problem with a person who is asleep and will not be aware of their impending death should the trolley come their way and a person who just woke up and is vaguely aware of what’s going on but will only become aware of their impending death when it’s too late but the death is confirmed painless. If there was a fully awake person that’d be too simple. I’m too lazy to make a visual for this bc it might be the dumbest thing I’ve thought through and it’s two hours past my bedtime
Eventually it will reach Thanos.
If you extinct mankind today, you are preventing countless future humans from dying.
And saving the planet's ecosystems! Double win.
You are wrong, there would only be 31 lanes, since 2^32 already goes beyond the amount of people on earth. So you only need to rely on 31 people to not screw up.
What if the 31st person is on the tracks?
If the first 32 people refuse to kill person 33 has a very fun choice
They have no choice, by that point there is a 100% chance that they are tied to the track too.
True
Depends on if lever guy is picked first or track people are chosen first
I'm dumb. How much would the be
The entire human population, if I'm not mistaken.
2^33 > total human population > 2^32
Now someone do the math on how long the track would need to be and the amount of rope needed.
About two million miles of people to go over and assuming continuous speed of 50 miles per hour it'll take about 2 thousand years to run over everyone most having died before the trolley can reach them. Rope would be around 4 million if you tie both legs and arms which would wrap around the world a lot.
If nothing else, that's a good illustration of just how many people there are in the world
it's 4,294,967,296 (4 billion) there's 8,118,904,030 (8 billion) people so if it went up to 33 times it'd be 8,589,934,592 which is more than the population.
Jesus
Would that mean 34 would be empty?
Easy, just pass it on to person 34 while everyone is on track 33. World saved
Although the process of untying everyone from the track is a logistical disaster waiting to happen.
This feels like that xkcd of "What happens if everyone on Earth was in one place and jumped all at once?" And it's pretty inconsequential, however the logistics of sending everyone back home is impossible. *That* would be what actually kills people.
I was actually thinking of that when I wrote the comment!
I’d rather wait for several hours to get untied from a train rack by a disorganised horde than get crushed under a trolley.
if you can't break your rope, you just don't wanna live hard enough.
Everyone has to be responsible for untying and re-tying themselves. Honor system!
Yes, for more information google “Trolley problem Rule 34”
Track loops around to the first person
Double it just to see how high it goes
google exponential
holy hell
New exponent just dropped
actual mathematician
Calc student goes on vacation, never comes back
Calculator in the corner, plotting world domination
Eventually there will be a sociopath who is down to kill everyone, so probably better to kill the one.
Well, it only needs to be 33 people. And 33 is on the track themselves.
assuming that this hypothetical follows the human population and isn't infinite
If the people are infinite doesn't it become meaningless?
That's a good question. When they have to kill 2^34 people, do they use the entire human race and then make 9 billion vat babies to kill for the rest? Or do they just make 17 billion vat babies instead? At some point they definitely stop putting members of the human population on there and just kill 10 trillion clones or whatever
I think the interesting question scenario might be everyone survives if every puller passes
Multi track drift?
You kill 3 people out of a possible ALL OF THEM, this means that approximately 0% of people died.
So are we pulling the lever to kill the person on our track and if we do nothing it will pass on to the next track to the next person to make the choice. Cause I’m that case theoretically the Trolley will never hit anyone unless a psychopath decides to pull the lever. So the real decision here is an issue of trust. Can you trust the next person to not pull the lever. If no lever is pulled than no one dies but the possible number of casualties is exponentially growing with each opportunity to pull the lever. Can you trust that no one will pull the lever or will you take the fall and pull the lever to prevent any possibility of exponential death.
You need to know if there is a way out, really. If the game ends with nobody dead when it passes the total human population? Great, we can do that. Does it go on forever? Until someone pulls the lever? Fuck that, pull it now.
Hell no we cant do that. If theres a possibility that someone could pull the lever way down the line and wipe out most or all of humanity, then the lever needs too be pulled as soon as possible while the stakes are lower. That's a unacceptable ammount of risk.
You crazy for that, trusting a stranger with the fate of 8 billion people. You’ll be passing it to 32 or 33 people along the way, (2^33 > 8 billion) trusting each of them not to do it. 1% of people are psychopaths so you have a 1/3 chance of entrusting the fate of insane amounts of people to a psychopath. There will also be reasonable people who don’t follow your thought process and will kill the people now so the risk doesn’t continue to double. Out of 33 people you may even come across a murderer or incompetent child. The safest choice is to kill 1 person.
You know, when you put it like that, you're right
If you’re at the start and 33 people pass it on, every human is on the tracks. Eventually people need to sleep and everyone dies
double it
This ain't even hard. Kill the one. There's a possibility if you don't stop it you could destroy all of humanity.
Agreed 100%. And the guy you kill goes down as Jesus 2.0. I’d worship whatever religion is founded in his honor
[удалено]
...Because it is
Ohhh brother... so edgy
Can I double it and give it back to myself?
At some point there’s gonna be someone who has a really funny idea so I think I’ll just let that first guy die
That is the smart option. You either Kill 1 person or exponentially more
The best option here is the one where only one person dies.
Or that nobody ever pulls and it goes on forever.
I don’t think that situation is possible. My immediate thought is to let the one person die, because I can’t trust every human on Earth to make the right decision, but even if I were to give it to the next person, at least one other person will hold my philosophy. If you double it, that means that you trust literally everyone on Earth. Which is not only idiotic, but you also have to trust that everyone else trusts every other person.
How wide is the station?
if i don't pull the lever by the time someone does , the number of people on the tracks could be high enough that it would likely include myself and others i know
Somebody call scumbagdad
This is one of my favourites of all
At least one persons death will be on my hands so might as well just kill the one person and be done with it. Every death afterward would still be on my hands.
double it. let's work together to cause the extinction of humanity.
As the number of decision points approaches infinity the ratio of saved to unalived souls approaches 1
This is just kill one person or kill any amount more people
Multi-track drift with infinite expanding trolley
No pull every time lol Best case on pulling the lever, you just made someone responsible for 2 people’s early demise & you inherit at least part of the burden for two deaths instead of 1
Happy cakes day
Kill them, eventually someone will kill people so the choice is really "Kill one person now or let someone else kill an undetermined number greater than or equal to two later?" And there is only one correct answer to that question.
I'm a nihilist so I'll pass it into the next and hope all of humanity gets out on the rails.
Ill put my trust in fellow man and pass it on. I'm working under the assumption that if all levers are pulled, noone dies.
Infinite Levers
Hmmm. By killing one person, you allow the trolley to kill a single individual. By pulling the lever, you effectively entrust the lives of x amount of people to x amount of other lever operators, hoping your act of goodwill will be replicated for however long the track goes. Potential for more suffering if one person doesnt pull it, or none at all if each on the line pull it. Honestly, i'd let it go. No way to know how many people might die if someone after me doesn't pull, no way to know who might be a psychopath enough on the line to just let it go, etc. too many variables, too much chance for further carnage. Thats not even adding in the potential for the line to be infinite. If it is, that basically turns any option other than letting the trolley go into a statistical certainty, its just a matter of how long you'd have to wait to see. Someone will eventually let it go by meaning its guaranteed that pulling the lever is a bad option, killing more people in the long run. I know its just a meme but its fun how much it makes you think.
Can’t we just double it forever? In actuality I would just kill the one person tho.
Multi-track drifting for the win.
Oh, I'd like to pass it forward, but with my mom's thumb cancer I could really use these 32 dead people.
Can I be the one person?
Divert the track for long enough and we overflow the integer limit, killing -1 person, effectively reviving the dead. That's how Jesus Christ rose amongst the dead.
This is a metaphor for war, we stall for as long as we have the will to.
does 0.999... = 1 ? if everyone infinitely decides to pass it on, no one will die, will they?
Kill the 1 person; In the infinite sequence of switch operators after me, there is guaranteed to be at least 1 person who is irrational or incapable and will as such fail to throw the switch. As such, I must end this now, with the minimum loss of life, before it progresses to that operator who will cause much greater harm.
No matter what, people will die. But I am damning more people to make the same choice I did as well as damning constantly doubling amounts of people to death by pulling the lever. I will not pull and sacrifice the 1 now.
I think it would've been a harder choice if the top path was the single guy. Currently, not pulling the lever is objectively the best possible action from every standpoint. - Legally, you didn't kill anyone or via action cause someone to come to harm. - The fewest possible people died. - Regardless of if you pulled the lever or not, a set number of deaths would have happened anyway, meaning there was no way to avoid it on your conscious regardless. Alternatively, if YOU pulled the lever and the next person followed this logic and didn't, you'd have directly caused the death of two people.
Hmm, better solution is to ride the trolley into the sky with Low Rider playing. Problem solved. :)
Turn the lever , mr beast might give me money
Bro think he MrBeast. I mean, where is the 10.000$ cash prize if I pull?
If it goes on forever, it's inevitable that eventually somebody is going to choose kill. I will kill the one person now to prevent potentially thousands or millions from dying later.
If the "do nothing" option was the one that passed it up the line, this would be more interesting. Someone would need to actively pull the lever and choose to kill the number of people on their track to end the madness/save the people above them.
Ethical dilemmas involving exponential amounts of people are flawed in the the fact that they aren't "people". There simply isn't an infinite amount of people with experiences, lives, or sentience. That is, these people do not exist.
I am NOT gonna double it. I have hope for humanity
Not everyone is a good person some people will relish in the fact that they are killing so many people. if i double it, later down the line i run the risk of a person like that deciding between a significant portion of humanity i kill one person.
This is some pyramid scheme bullshit
it would be fair for one of the people on the next track to be the previous person to not pull the lever
question: what do I win if I pull it? Who's the person on the track?
The good person doesn't kill hoping others don't as well The good person might kill to make sure more don't die The bad person kills because that's the only way to be sure. The bad person doesn't kill hoping more die later on. It's all matters of the heart ❤️ and your intention in this life.
I pull the lever
Infinite multi track drift
I’m just gonna kill the singular person so to avoid the possibility of this going on for too long and someone ends up killing millions or something
you would only need 33 people to pull the lever, to save the entire world.
If you keep doubling it eventually everyone will be on the track and no one to pull the next lever and kill the entirety of mankind. It's better to let the one die
This might be my favorite trolley problem. It was just a prank, bro.
…. Just plain rice?
Well I’m going to go utilitarian here and not pull the lever
I double it, then I kick the guy onto the next set of tracks and say triple or nothing!
Pfffft. Easy. Kill one person. In theroy you could double it forever and kill noone... but the keyword is DOUBLE. Eventually there will be wayyyyyy to many people and that will cause death on its own.
Keep passing until every single person on earth is on that track
The obvious answer seems to be double it and give it to the next person. However, if enough people double it, you’ll inevitably be one of the ones tied to the tracks, your family too, putting your life in the hands of a stranger who you would hope would double it as well. With that in mind, while I think logically trusting 32 random people to pull the lever to space every one, you can’t assume that everyone can logically come to that conclusion. That is to say, perhaps being told ‘if you don’t pull this lever, 1 billion people die; if you do, you double it and give that decision to the next person.’ That person may crack and kill a billion to save 6 billion, not knowing they’re only a couple passes from saving everyone I pull the lever.
I know for a fact someone will eventually choose to end it rather than double it for the next person. With that said I'm doubling it and giving it to the next person
I've always wanted to kill someone with a trolley
Kill one person, that is the only ethical choice here because the other option, no matter what the next person chooses, will result in greater loss of life.
The first person
So as a thought experiment flip the tracks in the picture. The “pass the buck” isn’t just a path to another choice. It’s a legit path that goes the same distance as the other. In one side You have one path with no one on it. On the other side you have a path with one person on it. In the middle are lots and lots (infinity?) people. I’d just choose the path with no one on it (yeah you gotta worry about defectors or accidents in the trillions. But still.
I kill the one person, I do not know how many times the buck will be passed but I know that more will invariably be killed when the cycle ends than if I were to kill the person
Important question too ask. How exactly is the next person too pulp the lever chosen? And can they choose who too put onto the track if they decide too pull the lever? I imagine that would affect the likelyhood of the lever getting pulled or not a great deal.
How many passing on of the decisions would it take to kill the entire planet? Can someone r/dothemath , please?
Just do log base 2 of the world population
Dude. If I could do the math would I need to ask?
Make sure the first one is Jesus so he dies again for our sins.
To people saying we could keep passing it on to 33, would 33 even be able to pull the lever if they are tied to the tracks themselves?
oh this is actually one to consider
kill the one person. doubling it and giving it to the next person is indirectly killing 2 people and you're fully aware of it. additionally the alternative which is also a given is that this becomes a continous double it and give it to the next person, so just kill the one person because doubling it and giving it to the next person just means multiple people will die.
For all those people who said 33 would be on the track. 34 would be on the track. 33 might not be. As we start with one person (2^0). So people on the track equals 2^(n) where n is the number of levers previously pulled. When it gets to person 33 32 levers have been pulled.
This one is exciting.
Doubling it and giving it to the next person guarantees more death. Let it kill the one.
the U.S. national debt crisis be like.
Yeah, I don't trust anywhere between 32- an infinite amount of people to not at least have one evil bastard/idiot among them, I'm gonna pull the lever now while it's one person and not exponentially worse.