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That's been the secret answer for human beings.

My favorite "trolley problem" answer at this point is how Superboy solved a similar problem (a train barreling toward a crowd). Get a silly/mean-spirited question, get a silly (but not mean-spirited) answer?

This is great.

John Rawls would approve!

While we're at it, the correct answer to "what do you want to eat tonight?" is "fuck you, why are you so fixated on finding reasons to justify me eating?"

In fiction or in reality? Moral dilemmas are interesting to read. They’re often artificial when a politician justifies their cruelty and war.

That's because it's not a solvable problem. It's a metaphor that explains utilitarianism vs deontology.

I vaguely remember a quote along the lines of 'Someone fixated on debating lifeboat ethics on dry land takes joy in imagining himself the officer with the pistol, deciding who lives and dies'. It's a sadists pastime.

Came here to find this that episode and Jeremy bearimy may be my favorite parts of the show (well obviously there's also Jason and Janet generally)

Trolley problem with one path labeled "human lives" and the other labeled "stock price"

Don't kink shame me.

bsky.app/profile/spav...

correct & good take

Now let's not be hasty. Sure the trolley kills a lot of people but have you considered that it gets me to work on time? Let's not abandon this form of low carbon public transport because of a few broken eggs.

See also: people quoting "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one)" to justify inflicting negative consequences on a minority. This argument is about people choosing to make a sacrifice. It's only valid *if you are one of the few* (or the one) making that choice.

Came here for Kobayashi Maru, and yes.

Yep. Been thinking this exact same thing for a while. There is a reason people in power have tried to frame the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as a "trolley problem" rather than the atrocity it really was.

There is some kind of deep-seated belief that you *have* to have a lesser evil! We can’t just nominate someone who is on our side, that’d be laughable, they *have* to hate trans people or have a Nazi tattoo or SOMETHING

I loved the Good Place's take on this

SECRET THIRD CHOICE!

The perfect information is the dodgiest bit. In the real world a politician might make a plan that seems win-win for everyone but 10 years down the line something unforeseen and harmful is revealed. This can be paralyzing to voters.

All that to say, it’s a thought experiment (and you can debate its efficacy), not a moral framework to be universalized. When debate perverts use it as some sort of political gotcha, they’re misusing the concept in bad faith. Assuming that someone has to be default sacrificed. It’s false pragmatism

My response has always been that if you give someone a choice between two equally* bad outcomes, you derive no useful conclusion from the choice they make. *I contend that the quantity of lives lost does not change the degree of wrongness.

It's just a bad thought experiment that people have grabbed onto. It's like Schrödinger's Cat and missing the point by using it to prove a point of view.

This is why the scene in The Good Place where they do it FOR REAL is so brilliant. Just sobbing, covered in blood and hunks of flesh after the 326th iteration. It's just a great joke about 'thought experiments' in general. ( and don't get me started on that Chinese Room nonsense.)

If people want thought experiments, it's time to move onto The Cosmic Doom Scenario Of Survival Vouching For Survival, which came to me during insomnia and is fresh and new. www.bookofpdr.com/2026/02/20/t...

Everyone talks about throwing switches, but nobody discusses just stopping the train.

Dunno why we keep pretending that the dilemma is concrete in the realm of autonomous vehicles when the obvious answer there is “the car slams on the brakes as hard as possible to minimize manufacturer liability.” What a worthless problem to endlessly discuss.

The trolley problem in it's native format (ie. Educational discussions) is primarily about illustrating that these kinds of hypotheticals don't really work. It's infuriating that dumb and evil people have grasped onto it as very clever sacrifice justifications for adults tm*

My issue with Trolley problems is that it all hinges on the idea that murder through willful action and murder through deliberate inaction are somehow morally different. You have to put it in this very specific weird context because otherwise it falls apart.