Working on my graduate degree and desperately need to get better at writing. I want to write and publish a lot but my grammar and general style is quite bad. The allure of AI is forever present but I resist it to maintain my own skill.

Edit: Thank you for all the kind replies.

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?