The trolley problem — What would you do?

The trolley problem is a thought used senario to see how you would react in this ethics deilema.

The image above shows your choices. Let me explain. You are an innocent bystander wittnessing a trolley cart moving straight towards a group of people on the track. These 5 are completely random, they could be someone you’ve never met, a theif, a really good person, or even your grandma. They are tied to the track helplessly and can’t move. The cart will run them over. However, you have access to a lever that can change the direction of the trolley cart onto another track, where only one person is tied, again, completely random person and you have no clue who they are. If you pull the lever, you wouldv’e killed the one person. But, if you leave this scene as it is, you’d be indirectly respnsible for those 5 people’s death and the one person would be saved. What would you do?

Let’s look at the two sides of this. On one hand, you could pull the lever and save the 5 people, but likely go to jail for the murder of the other person. On the other hand, if you don’t pull the lever, you’d be marked as an innocent bystander and won’t face any trials. However, you’d need to live with the fact that you technicly killed 5 people when you had the oppurtunity to save them.

Now, morrally, in my opinion it’s better to pull the lever and save 5 people for the price of one. However, if I were acctually there, I don’t think I’d pull the lever. Here’s why: If I acctually pulled the lever, I would probably go to jail since I indirectly killed the 1 person. I don’t want to go to jail and I’m more important to myself than these 5 random people, (you know you would too!) Therefore, if I were really there, I wouldn’t press the lever.

Now let’s change the senario a little. Instead, you are on a bridge watching the trolley cart go with another, very obese, bystander. You could push him off the bridge, and that would be enough to stop the train and save the 5 people tied to the tracks, but then you would be killing this random person who has nothing to do with it. Or, you could do nothing and again, watch 5 people die. Would you change your answer?

Let’s see the difference between these two senarios. In the first version, we aren’t including any other innocent people in the dilemma. The person tied up did something to be stuck there. The obese man did nothing to get stuck on the track and you are including him, perhaps unnessicarily based on your opinion.

This would honestly change my answer. Now, my morrals would change as the obese man is just a bystander, like me. In the second senario, I would let the 5 people die. Besides, the man can always chose to be a hero and jump off himself, making things easier for me. (Oh please, you would like it better if you were in the situation,)

Overall, the trolley problem is a thought experiment used to explore ethical dilemmas related to moral desicion making. There are several versions of this sinario, but the main theme remains the same: How how should we make decisions in situations where there are no good options and people’s lives are at stake? Depending on your own personal values, everyone has a different opinion or answer to this question. So what would you do?