r/trolleyproblem

A trolley is on a single track. A lever controls the percentage of the track at which the trolley will stop (from 0% to 100%). At the end of the track, at 100%, a conscious human is attached. At the beginning of the track, at 0%, nothing is attached. At each percentage point (1%, 2%, 3%, and so on up to 99%), there is a machine. Each machine is identical to the human to a degree equal to its position on the track. For example, at 38% of the track, the machine is identical to the human to the extent of 38%. Inside the trolley, there is also a conscious human. The human inside the trolley will die unless you stop the trolley at the exact percentage where all of the unconscious machines have been destroyed while all of the conscious beings remain safe. The lever's default position is 100%. At what percentage do you set the lever?

You were tied to the track by morally ambiguous time travelers and they tell you some horrifying things. A trolley is heading down the tracks and will go through a rip in time, killing future you, which will directly cause the apocalypse. If the apocalypse happens, everyone you love and care about is guaranteed to die painful deaths. You are close enough to the lever to pull it, in which case you will die a painful death, but future you will not exist and the apocalypse will not happen. Other than tying you to the tracks, the morally ambiguous time travelers can do nothing and must return home before you make the decision.

You and an unknown number of other people, who have the same decision to make as you, and are unable to communicate, are seeing a trolley come to an intersection. The trolley has a 75% chance of going down a path with no people, but a 25% chance of going down the path with a person tied to the tracks. Each lever adjusts the probability that it goes down the path according to f(x)=|x-0.25|+0.5, where x is the percentage of people who pull the lever. (if 50% pull the lever, it is the same 75% chance, if any single person pulls the lever, but less than 50%, the chance of running over the person is higher than the original 25%, if at least 75% of people pull the lever, the empty track is guaranteed.) All participants know this information, but also know that if they pull the lever, they will be tied to the tracks next, and the only way to prevent future iterations for no one to pull the lever. Do you pull the lever?

If you don't choose a direction, then the trolley will explode, killing dozens of people. You don't know any information about any of these people. Which side do you choose, and why?

Oh no! The trolley is bearing down on one innocent person! Don't worry, there's a lever you can pull that will send the trolley off on an enormous detour that will keep it safely out of the way for 100 years.

Unfortunately at the end of the hundred years the trolley will come back and crash into five randomly selected people. These are future people who haven't been born yet, but they are real people and it's definitely going to happen. There's nothing anyone can do in the next hundred years to prevent it.

Do you pull the lever?

And if so, what's the shortest length of detour at which you would have said yes? I'm guessing that most people would say no at 1 second but yes at a million years, so where is the cutoff point at which you don't feel responsible for people in the future?

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