Our approach to climate change.
Replace the first person with corporate profits and the last person with a cliff, and you’re right.
Obligatory https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/
This is true to the original intent of the trolley problem, which is about how our moral choices are informed by specific circumstances, rather than by moral principle. Most eager lever pullers are much more resistant to taking action regarding the master transplant surgeon, the mafia organ harvester and the stranger.
deleted by creator
Now that is a new take on it.
I feel the same. That one is, indeed, a new dilemma, instead or just a joke or simple variation.
If I go with 1, it won’t solve the problem. You think the sadistic fuck who set up the system won’t just laugh and set it up again for someone else to play?
Pass it along. At some point the tram will break down.
Like a good Boomer pass it down to the next one.
Kill one person and become an hero: If I double it and give it to the next person and this behaviour carries on it would need just a few people until the first guys get the power to kill every human being. In this scenario I kill one person, so no one gets the power to potentially kill 1+n persons which will eventually happen.
This is basically what is happening in capitalism, everyone keeps pushing the problems on the guys down the line for short-term gains!
I see a lever, I pull it.
Cats don’t ask questions.
As long as n-1 person is the next lever puller who cares.
Well, the last human will have no one to pass the problem to, and will have to kill 2^(human population - 1), which will cap to the entire population.
If you assume that each person takes at least 10 seconds to make the decision, it would take something like 2500 years for everyone currently alive to cycle through one time, at which point we’ll have plenty of new people to pass the decision along to.
As long as we don’t increase the human lifespan past 2500 years or fully stop reproducing, we should be okay!
How many turns until it’s the entire population of the planet?
Doubling every turn would reach 8,589,934,592 on turn 34
when I guess we’re all dead
I find it more likely that there is at least one person down the line that will pull the lever than that there is absolutely no-one for infinite people in line (ignoring real population limits) that will pull the lever.
Given that the choice is now 1 vs more than 1, the ethical choice is to pull the lever.
There’s an interesting thought.
What if the limit was just a small/medium sized town?
Surely with a smaller group there must be some hope that everyone in the chain will make the right choice.
How big of a population would you need to switch from “hope everyone is good” to “I need to flip the switch, because someone is almost certain to later when more lives are (literally) on the line”
And how stressful would it be to be right at the edge of those two choices?
I found the lever puller, guys!
I know who we’re putting the first one on the rails!
I pass it to the n+1th person. We can do this forever because integers is infinite.
Smart solution. Like this, no one ever gets killed but we need an infinite number of people on the switches.
Until you get to that one person that would like to end mankind way down the line.
It’s curious how they’re selected. During the nuclear age we’ve had nukes in the hands of fanatics who hated the enemy, who were able to comprehend the gravity of their responsibility enough that not once did a nuclear tipped weapon get launched in error or against orders… or at all.
We’re closing on eighty years without an atomic war. Not a small accomplishment. It’s one of the few things that gives me hope for humanity.
It just takes one.
If we can travel faster than the trolley, we could adjust all switches with one person who continues to travel to the next junction before the trolley arrives!
Hell of a job, but yes 😆
While integers are infinite, humans are not. Eventually the entire population of the earth would be on the tracks and nobody to flip the switch.
The entire population of the earth is already on the tracks with nobody to flip the switch, brother.
lights cigar
Do we consider intelligent aliens to be “person”? Because the universe is also infinite AFAIK
Most scientists agree it is finite.
Do they? There’s broad consensus on the size of the observable part, but what’s beyond that is surely more speculation than science.
Based on observations it seems that the universe curves in on itself. And is thus finite.
I’m pretty the curvature of the universe has actually been measured to be very close to 0, within margin of error, which would suggest an infinite universe. (It doesn’t prove it by any means, though. The curvature could just too small to measure.)
However, the observable universe is indeed finite, due to the speed of light being finite.
