Trolley problem, again
Hi!
I just watched the TV show Widow's Bay (highly recommended). One episode explored the classic trolley problem and got my mind rolling over its fascinating nuances. I see this problem was already discussed on tildes, but hope a 2026 revisit is worthwhile.
The episode promoted not pulling the lever. It argued that we can't stop all the horrible things that happen in the world. But we can control our own moral status:
"The runaway trolley is life. The lever is me... if I pull that lever it's a choice and I'm choosing to kill that person. I could never do that."
and this lovely message:
"The world is violent and mercurial. It will have its way with you…We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it all the time is love."
As sweet as that is, I find that interpretation lacking. To me, the physical act of pulling the lever isn't the core moral signal. Not pulling it isn't a get-out-of-responsibility-free card. There's still a violent outcome. That outcome happened because you made the choice to allow it. While you're not responsible for the scenario, you're still responsible for the outcome because it was entirely on you what the result would be.
I think my interpretation matches the "utilitarian" argument, which also hints at "the ends justify the means." I'm not, more generally, willing to get behind "the ends justify the means". But there is important nuance here. Sometimes we must cause harm for greater good and inaction in hard circumstances is its own moral trap. So I'm not sure what I think.
Also enjoyed exploring the variants at https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/. How would you handle them?
I'm actually quite frustrated with the trolley problem lately, because it's a binary. And the real world doesn't have to be like that. But currently I'm watching people use the justification of causing the "least harm" to discriminate against minority groups, in the name of protecting the whole.
I think choosing not to pull the lever and intervene if you cant meaningfully do something is valid. But I'd really rather IRL we focus on moving people off the tracks, changing the route, and solving the problems instead.
The Kobayashi Maru in effect. Don't choose from the least bad options, MacGyver a third way.
Yes kind of, but also real world situations are rarely actually a trolley problem where the options are pull or don't, vs., perhaps much more viscerally, shoot one group of people or another. It's direct, not distanced, it's an active choice to hurt someone.
Or currently, an active choice to hurt someone and violate the law to hope that maybe the federal government won't target us for not hurting those people. But you know, greater good right? Better pull that lever because the risk is just so great. Only costs your soul.
I'm particularly pessimistic towards people caving to this sort of framing atm, so this is certainly influencing my POV. If you view this lever as an option then the temptation to pull it will always be there.
There's some merit to exploring the problem because sometimes the danger could present itself in a binary way. The self driving car is perhaps the most salient example as it might be important to give the machine an answer when it's facing a "go straight and kill one, or swerve and kill more".
That said, I agree that for the most part it's an exercise in futility. @Zorind already mentioned how it often has only the utilitarian input play a role rather than additional societal, ethical, or otherwise important factors that may influence the answer.
Nevertheless, it can be interesting to see how one answers to see how they think and at least spark a discussion around it where you explore the topic and add additional parameters.
Yes it's a lovely thought experiment and I'm not mad at others engaging in it. Just sharing my thoughts and why I'm less keen on it than others
Though I'd say self driving cars also have "stop" and shouldn't be going that fast
With self driving cars, there's much more uncertainty, not to mention fast speeds. The self driving car should do what we teach humans to do in defensive driving: if something whack is happening, press the brakes as hard as possible.
What should the self driving car do if even at max brakes it will hit 10 orphans and 20 puppies? It should still apply the brakes and kill the orphans and puppies. Because in real life we don't know that a) if swerving will make things worse, fatality wise and b) that the breaks won't stop in time.
Things on the road go whack, just slow down and figure it out from there.
Excellent insight, thank you. Far better to avoid facing the trolley problem in the first place.
I guess it's a metaphor for trying, desperate times. We always have and always will face them. But we do best when we reduce the need for them.
The Trolley Problem kind of seems like an intentional straw-man argument with real world corollaries, especially in medicine. Could you amputate someone's limb without anesthesia to save their life? Could you perform surgery for the same reasons? All of these are considered altruistic choices by society as a whole, but they also impact our "moral status" in some way. It absolutely would change me on a fundamental mental level to be able to cut open a living being open. Choosing to bring myself to do that is much more impactful to me than maintaining my normal state of not doing that. I think that's the difference between the "choice" of pulling the lever in the Trolley Problem.
Specific to Widow's Bay, I recall there being a significant impact on the situation on the choice being presented by an outside and malevolent conscious "power". Meaning something presented the situation and was already making the decision to cause the deaths. I am curious if any studies have ever tested the Trolley problem between situations where an outside power explicitly/implicitly causes the situation, vs the situation being caused by the person making the decision. I personally can see some implications for how belief in a higher power may then impact our decision making processes (or not).
Agreed. It’s a thought experiment, and should really only ever be treated as a thought experiment. In any real world scenario, there are too many situation-specific factors that make it basically useless to refer to IMO.
It was always "fun" to me to see the different answers people would give in my undergraduate philosophy classes where the trolley problem was brought up.
We did the standard "go to this side of the classroom for pull the lever, go to the other side of the classroom for not pull the lever". And it was interesting to me how many people would swap their decision when it changed from the standard trolley problem to the "fat man" version of the trolley problem.
This specific argument, that apparently someone makes in the show you're talking about
always annoyed me. Because not doing something is still a choice.
The argument that "not pulling the lever" is not making a choice has never made sense to me.
Like, I think there is a valid argument that someone could make for not pulling the lever (e.g. direct vs indirect responsibility), but saying that it isn't making a choice doesn't hold water to me.
But also, in that class, the first time we were going over the trolley problem is the first time I ever heard the "medical transplant" version of the trolley problem. And I ended up as basically the only person that ended up going "in for a penny, in for a pound" and stayed in the "kill one to save five" side of the room. (I don't think I hold that opinion anymore, given resultant discussions around societal and medical ethical codes...but when it is presented with the same utilitarian math as the trolley problem as the only "inputs" to the question...)
I agree.
One interesting twist is that in the real world we rarely know outcomes with certainty before we make our choices.
How does doubt affect your choices? What if pulling the lever kills everyone on both tracks? What if emergency responders are en route and have a good chance of arriving on time and finding a way to save everyone? What if pulling the lever might derail the trolley and send it straight toward you? What about the passengers on the trolley? Which outcome is more dangerous for them?
All the doubt we have in the real world would make me far less confident to bias to action.
Yeah, there is no way to actually “apply” the trolley problem in a real-world scenario.
There are way too many factors in the real world that basically entirely mitigate the framing.
I recommend the original paper the thought experiment comes from, it's a rather more interesting read to me than the sort of "moral personality test" way it tends to be used. The initial context was the author presenting a series of similar situations where she felt most people would intuitively agree one side is the right choice, yet where the consensus would be different for each question despite them being mathematically equivalent, and trying to puzzle out what the underlying principles that make them distinct are to then examine the question of abortion in various circumstances.
Somehow I didn't know this was about abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect - under which aborting an ectopic pregnancy is prohibited but removing the fallopian tube that is causing the risk to the woman's health and incidentally aborting the pregnancy in the process is fine.
I have feelings about this.
If I understand correctly the paper actually concludes the doctrine is mistaken and lands on an alternative standard the author believes fits what she considers moral intuition more consistently, but yes that's apparently the topic it originally comes from. (Though I was more sharing it because of the questions than because of the answers.)
Sure I just didn't know that was the origin!
I'm rather familiar with the doctrine. It's an interesting read.
Mostly an aside, but on the topic of the trolley problem, I liked this comic from a while back satirizing it a tad. I don't really have anything to add to the discussion, however 😅
For folks who avoid X it's posted on his Instagram
And reposted on tumblr here