A Morality Paradox

[earlthekevin]

You are inside a trolly going down a hill. THe brakes have gone out and there is no way to stop it. You approach a fork in the road on the left are 5 construction workers. On the right is 1 construction worker. If you did nothing the trolly would automatically go left. There is a lever on the trolly that would change the track to go right. Now here is the question:

Would you pull the lever killing one man or do nothing and let the trolly go left and kill 5 men knowing you couldve saved them?




Now here is the second part
You are watching this situation from the side of the road. You are standing next to a VERY large man. If you were to push him in front of the trolly his gerth would stop the tram. If you did nothing it would kill the 5 men.

Would you push the man?

[Classicblast]

Hmmm.

I think generally it's better to try to save as many lives as possible. Is there anything other than one big guy that could stop the trolly before it makes chopped liver out of one to five workers?

[earlthekevin]

classicblast said:

Hmmm.

I think generally it's better to try to save as many lives as possible. Is there anything other than one big guy that could stop the trolly before it makes chopped liver out of one to five workers?

Well no because this is trying to make you think of what you would do in this situation if that was the ONLY solution

and with the fat man it would kill 5 because it's defaulted to left

[Classicblast]

I guess I have to go for saving the five in both cases.

[Geekthras (The Gizmo of Yore)]

I pull the lever, heading the trolley towards the 1 man, then pull it again so the back is heading towards the 5 men, thus stopping the trolley. I win.

[skier1]

Uh, that's not how trolleys work, gizmo. Try again.

[Kevin]

The engineer in me really wants to pick this apart. Mainly just the "large man" part of it.

I arbitrarily considered the angle of the hill to be 60 degrees from horizontal. After that I did a little math to find out the trolley would accellerate at a rate of 4.57 m/s^2. This was with a coeffiecient of friction of 0.8.

Now let's say that the surface of the hill was 30 meters long. With an initial velocity of zero (let's just say it made a stop right on top of the hill), the trolley would accelerate to a velocity of 16.55 m/s, or approximately 37 mph. A trolley moving at 37 mph carries some significant momentum. How much? Wel let's see.

I assigned the trolley a mass of 500kg, which is a weight of 10800 pounds. This of course is just an estimate. Now, you said a LARGE man. I'd consider a LARGE man to weigh about 500 pounds, which equals a mass of about 23 kg. A man weighing 500 pounds would need to be thrown at 360 m/s toward the trolley. That's 805 mph. I don't know about too many supersonic obese people.

Pushing the man would do nothing but kill him as well.

P.S.
Paradox.

[earlthekevin]

spartan said:

The engineer in me really wants to pick this apart. Mainly just the "large man" part of it.

I arbitrarily considered the angle of the hill to be 60 degrees from horizontal. After that I did a little math to find out the trolley would accellerate at a rate of 4.57 m/s^2. This was with a coeffiecient of friction of 0.8.

Now let's say that the surface of the hill was 30 meters long. With an initial velocity of zero (let's just say it made a stop right on top of the hill), the trolley would accelerate to a velocity of 16.55 m/s, or approximately 37 mph. A trolley moving at 37 mph carries some significant momentum. How much? Wel let's see.

I assigned the trolley a mass of 500kg, which is a weight of 10800 pounds. This of course is just an estimate. Now, you said a LARGE man. I'd consider a LARGE man to weigh about 500 pounds, which equals a mass of about 23 kg. A man weighing 500 pounds would need to be thrown at 360 m/s toward the trolley. That's 805 mph. I don't know about too many supersonic obese people.

Pushing the man would do nothing but kill him as well.

P.S.
Paradox.

The wizord in me wants to punch you in the face

Besides just play along. It's just interesting to see what people say

[Geekthras (The Gizmo of Yore)]

skier1 said:

Uh, that's not how trolleys work, gizmo. Try again.

It still wins the paradox, though.

[skier1]

How so? If you flipped the switch, you just went out of your way to kill someone.

[Peon]

skier1 said:

How so? If you flipped the switch, you just went out of your way to kill someone.

And thus we have come to the core of the matter. Am I really going to get off my fat ass and flip a switch just to save four lives? It is obvious to me that I am far too lazy to do such a thing.

[roflstunts]

Well, first I would marvel at a lever on a moving trolley that can change the track it's travelling on.

Secondly, I would probably shout "THERE'S A RUNAWAY TROLLEY HEADED YOUR WAY, NUMBNUTS'!" And if they all had iPods on, listening to My Chemical Romance and Cute is What We Aim For and did not hear my warning, I would then manuever the lever into a position between that of the ON and the OFF position, making the track only switch half way, crashing the trolley, killing me in the process.

The trolley would then flip into the canal that separates the two tracks and I would be flung all ragdollish onto a passing seaturtle. The trolley would then sink down to the bottom of the canal and explode when it's searing hot wheels touch the toxic waste barrels left by environmentally inconsiderate waste management engineers.

The blast would send Mr. Turtle and I into the 1.2 Gigawatt power-lines above us. The intense electrical force would transfer the turtle's life force into me and revive my vitals completely. Had the electric wires been 1.21 Gigawatt's, the energy would have sent the turtle and I back to the year 1985.

I would fall from the sky, newly reborn, and conveniently land in a Bennigan's. I would think to myself, "Now I know why I hate Bob Dylan" and order the chicken fingers and fries.


Alex - Destroyer of Paradoxes

[skier1]

Well, if the construction workers WERE listening to My Chemical Romance, I'd let the trolley hit them. Or, if I was an observer, I'd push the fat guy, with full knowledge that he doesn't have enough mass to stop the train. Two birds with one stone.