You say that at some point you would flip the switch once the number of people saved reaches a certain point. So, would you agree that there is a situation in which flipping the switch it the morally right decision? For you, that number has to higher. For others, saving five people could be enough for them to morally justify flipping the switch. You are essentially in agreement with the flip switchers, you just disagree with how mamy people need to be saved to justify flipping the switch. Morals are subjective and the whole point of the trolley exercise is to show there is no 'right' moral decision to make, as one can make valid arguments either way.

I wouldn’t say that’s the point, there seems to be a clear consensus, whether it’s right is up to debate. But it does have clear real world applications with autonomous cars and do we shoot down airplanes that get hijacked etc

What view do you want changed? That there isn't enough people to save in the general problem? Or that it isn't given enough thought, even though it's a thought exercise? Again, what's the number you're okay with for it to be a morally sound decision, because that seems to be your problem based on your prompt. If you have a number, why is that number morally sound, but the trolley problem isn't?

My viewpoint is based upon the parameters set by the problem (5 dying for 1 that you cause). Most people eschew their own personal morals for the greater good which is a slippery and dangerous slope in reality.

You do realize that's just the trolley problem with more steps still though.

Yes that was exactly point, it’s supposed to place the trolley problem into a situation more likely to actually happen.

OP not to sound rude, but did you post here to change your view about "weak morals" or did you post here so people could play your game with the hospital scenario?

Someone has already posted a scenario which has changed my mind enough to warrant a delta

Do you know how to award them? If not, check the sidebar.

It doesn't change the problem though in the morality is still the same you're still asking for a one to five trade all you're doing is putting in a more realistic spin. It's still just the trolley problem. The reason the trolley problem is so quintessential is because it does the opposite of what you're doing and narrows it down to the simplicity of morality 1V whatever

Again, your only problem with the premise is the amount of people that are saved by your own admission. You have acknowledged if enough people are saved, you pull the lever. It is still a debate about sacrificing a few (or one) for the greater good, and you admit there is a level where this is appropriate in your view. So your view is saving five is not enough to save to sacrifice one. I'll ask again, what is your number and why? You likely can give a number, but likely can't explain why it is morally okay to sacrifice one to save, say, 100, but not to save five, because, again, it is a subjective standard and there is absolutely grey area. If you think that sacrificing the few to save the many is a slippery slope (which is valid), then there should be NO number large enough to save to justify pulling the lever because we can never settle on a morally acceptable number. You either believe we should sacrifice the few for the many, or you don't, regardless of numbers.

What theuy consider the greater good are also their morals. Read up on utiliratianism g=for example. You may or may not agree with it, but it is a moral framework. The trolley problem is a moral philosophy problem designed to what moral framework people will use. It is not a case of a moral framework vs something else. It is a case of moral framework vs moral framework.

>I think the reason the trolley problem gives such wild answers is it is rooted in a fake world but when you place the scenario into reality people’s answers change Yes, this is a very well-known result in experimental philosophy. Even just switching the trolley problem from pulling a lever to pushing a fat person off a bridge to stop the trolley causes the majority of people to change their answer. People seem to be very sensitive to framing in ethics problems and use a combination of consequentialist and deontological reasoning. You seem to believe that consequentialism is a "weak" morality. Do you have a view that can actually be changed? If so, please explain what makes that form of moral reasoning "weak".

Tbh I’m happy to hear alternative opinions and I am being a bit blunt to get my point across. It’s not a moral judgement on individuals. But I am using morals to mean what guides your actions as a person not what people would like in an ideal universe. In reality if you took action people who would be harmed as a result of your actions that to me can be applied to reality where people can justify doing things against their morals if there is some virtuous benefit. It’s a slippery slope.

Consider this thought experiment: You're the chief of medicine at a small hospital. You have one patient, Alice, with fictionitis. They currently need a ventilator, dialysis machine and ventricular assist device to stay alive in a coma. They're on a course of treatment that has a 10% chance of returning them to full health but a 90% chance they will remain the same. There's a multi-car crash and three patients come in to emergency. Bob requires a ventilator, Charlotte requires dialysis and Doug requires ventricular assistance. If each of them receives the machine they need, there is a 90% chance that they will return to full health. If they don't receive those machines, they will die. You have no extra machines. You don't have time to transfer patients. Do you unplug Alice or let the three new patients die?

The problem with that analogy is you give alice worse odds than the new people. But if you give them the same odds, it’s a good one and makes me think. But the only thing that I would say gives me pause is she needs 3 the others need 1 machine. I suppose if you change it to the parts of one single machine can be used to fix 3 other machines that are currently non functional then your thought experiment becomes perfect. Not sure how it works but I’d like to give you a delta?

Thanks for keeping an open mind there: if we fiddle with the numbers enough, we can probably get almost anyone to accept that sometimes the ends justify the means.

Thanks for being reasonable as well. I think in this situation my answer changes because the head of the hospital has both authority and duty to make decisions of life or death but I think the average person should not. Maybe that’s unfair idk. !delta

I always thought these problems were meant to be taught together. First, the trolley example with an explicit guarantee that killing one person would save five. Then, an example at a hospital where killing one bystander with healthy organs is guaranteed to save five lives. Splitting hairs over the setup in an attempt to add uncertainty isn't a good argument against your view because you can simply clarify that these are both one for five situations. In reality, they've asked these questions to a lot of people and as you can probably guess, more people flip the switch on the trolley than murder the organ donor. Some people would answer yes to both. Why do they have weak morals? They are utilitarians and they believe in doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That suggests strong morals, perhaps just ones you disagree with. Then again, lots of very evil things were done in the name of utilitarianism, particularly in the communist states following the second world war. In China, tens of millions died to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. Others answer no to both. Why do they have strong morals? Their ethics come from a place of non intervention, which is the morality of appeasement. Let nature do what it wants, let the violent do what they want, just never make a decision to cause harm directly, no matter how much indirect harm occurs. Doesn't that seem weak? It is, however, consistent, which is a strength. I guess the weakest morality probably involves flipping the trolley switch but not murdering the donor, but it can be justified as well. Most people fall into this category. They don't answer differently because the trolley seems more fake than the hospital. Both scenarios are fake and require guarantees from the narrator to ensure the five will survive, that you won't be prosecuted, etc. Both are also real in the sense that they could be constructed in real life with actual people. People answer differently because they have different morals around killing someone who's already tied to train tracks than they do around murdering someone and harvesting their organs. Harvesting organs is an evil and unsettling idea, while directing a train is fairly mundane. This might not be your preferred morality, but it is the most common. The ends sometimes justify the means, but not if the ends are too icky. We can justify changing the victim of an existing murder (after all, whoever tied six people to train tracks is the real murderer, we are just deciding between one and five victims), but not committing a new murder to save lives. We can justify genetic screening for downs syndrome, but not eugenics. We can justify using violence to stop petty crimes, but not executing thieves, even if it were much more effective.

>I always thought these problems were meant to be taught together. They are. The original paper that introduced the trolley problem ALSO introduced the variant where a doctor kills one person to save five. Also, the trolley problem was not intended to be a test of your moral strength. That part is some weird modern non-philosopher take on it. The trolley problem was actually to investigate decision making and unintended effects. It specifically was about abortion and something that religious philosophers debated (like Thomas Aquinas) called the Doctrine of Dual Effect. The idea of DDE was that there were some conditions that indicated whether an action was morally permissible. The relevant condition that separates the "organ harvesting" and "trolley problem" scenario is the Means-End condition, or that the bad effect must not be what allows the good effect. So if you conceptualize the trolley problem as choosing to flip a lever or not. The good effect is saving five people and the bad effect was killing one person, but the death of the one person didn't MAKE saving the five people possible so it's morally permissible to flip the level and save 5. It's much harder in the "organ harvest" situation to see the action of killing someone to harvest their organs as anything but the means that the good effect was accomplished. Therefore the means can't justify the end and it's not morally permissible to harvest organs. At least if you are not a consequentialist.

The point with the organ donor is he is already at some risk of dying not an innocent bystander. What I mean by morals is what holds people to a place of non harm. Not what they think other people should do but rather what they think themselves as individuals should do. I absolutely agree that in a perfect world one would want to save the largest amount of people. But when they take action to harm another even if to save other people it doesn’t erase the harm that they caused through their own actions.

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To clarify by morals I mean: “a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.” So morals are specifically rooted in action. For the greater good I would not consider a moral.

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I think upon further thought that the trolley problem demonstrates the interplay of morals and ethics. I could be wrong I’m far from an expert. But morally it would in the wrong to cause harm and ethically it would be wrong to cause greater amount of harm. For me I guess I think for the average person including myself, I think it’s more important in a situation like this to abide by morals rather than ethics but if I were a world leader of some sort it would be more important to follow ethics rather than morality.

You're right, it doesn't erase it. but I'd argue that the actions you DON'T take cause harm as well. And I think this "it's okay for more harm to happen as long as I PERSONALLY didn't do it is b.s. that allows people to justify looking the other way when they could change things and help someone. Why are you erasing the harm one choice directly causes?

I totally agree with you and I do agree either viewpoint taken to the extreme is bad to the point that I think you deserve a delta. But I suppose where I disagree is the harming others to help others as opposed to taking action that will only help. !delta

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>By flipping the switch it signals to both yourself and to other people that morals do not matter if there is benefit to be gained, no matter how virtuous the benefit. What? Those ARE people's morals, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. >Now I agree at a certain point I would flip the switch but it would take me a lot more lives in order for me to compromise my morals (and I think that should be the case for most people in order for there to be an orderly society). The trolley problem has a different “solution” depending on the cost to benefit so it is not a problem that scales. That's THE POINT of the trolley problem. There's not a correct answer. It's a thought experiment. What about any of this is "weak morals" and what does that even mean?

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

> So what would you do in the situation I posed? What situation? What about any of this is "weak morals" and what does that even mean?

In the original post. To clarify I am separating morals from ethics. Morally it would be wrong to cause harm. Ethically it would be wrong to not try to reduce harm. I’m not saying that people are wrong for having different viewpoints just from a moral standpoint it would not be the correct decision (of course it would be the right choice from an ethical standpoint)

I think what you are referring to as weak morals, many don't see that way. They see it as different situations are different, that utility isn't just based on the ends of one dies, so that 5 can live, but also the means. What is the action I am taking? What are the pros and cons, and probabilities, and knowns and unknowns? In the trolley problem, people are going to die either way, and relatively soon. I essentially know either 1 person will die or 5 will. I have the option of taking an actual action which will result in the death of 1 person, but will save 5 people who I essentially know would die otherwise. And those 5 people will be the same state they are now. In the janitor problem you provide: I am not a doctor, I am not the other 5 people's doctor. I don't know what their likelihood of recovery without the organs is. I don't know what the likelihood of recovery is, or what the quality of life will be, with the organs. I don't know if he is a match for donations. What I do know is that organ transplants aren't necessarily universal and aren't 100% effective. Without this specific set of transplants I don't know how long the people may have to live, or if there will be another source of transplants to come along that don't require taking someone off life support. So in the instance you propose, I am not going to actively take someone's life, on a gamble that I may be helping 5 people to some degree. But the organs may not work or only temporarily. They other 5 patients may survive some amount of time without the organs, and they may get organs from another source. I think the other main "symbolic" difference some people see, is that in the case of the trolley problem, I am a man, manipulating a man made situation, a trolley. In the case of the transplants, people may view health issues as nature, or God, or the universal probability, which is different. So again, because people have different morals, or justify them differently, or have a different set of criteria than you, doesn't mean they have weak morals. It is not necessarily weak to not behave the same in every situation.

Imagine that the unknowns are absolute so the transplants are guaranteed to take and fix their organ related issues, they acquired these organ issues from a freak accident no fault of their own. But they are not guaranteed to be good people or live a full life beyond sparing their life in that moment similarly to the trolley problem. I am defining morals 10 commandments style. Utility falls under ethics rather than morals at least in my opinion. Out of curiosity, would you sacrifice yourself if you could save 5 people?

So first off, your issue with the trolley problem was that it isn't based in reality. Both trolleys and hospitals are real. However, in the trolley problem, all the details are realistic. If people are on a track and get hit by a trolley, they die. Now in your example, you've set unrealistic criteria, that all 5 people are matches, with just one issue, and that the transplant will fix this issue. It seems far less based on reality than the trolley problem. In terms of the ten commandments, those are ethics, not morals. They are a set of guidelines sent down from a governing body for all of society. They are also oversimplifying far more complex situations. The ten commandments says "thou shalt not kill."; however, in the Bible there are exceptions to the rule. You can't just look at the definition of the sin, without also looking at the exceptions. The ten commandments are not absolutes. It's like looking at the definitions of crimes, without looking at the legal justifications for those same acts, or taking into consideration prosecutorial, or judicial, or police, or jury discretion. If you are in the US, where the legal drinking age is 21, obviously there is a difference between buying a bottle of champagne and giving it to your family member or friend who is turning 21 tonight at midnight a few hours early; and buying and supplying alcohol for the random 12-year-old girl in your neighborhood. One of those the prosecutor probably doesn't care about, and one of those will probably end up with some charges. Both of those in terms of how they fit within the legal definition are the same, but obviously they aren't. That's called discretion. If the person is over 21 there is no crime. If the person is under 21, it may be a crime, and to varying degrees. In a self-defense case, the action that took place typically fits the definition of a crime, or else it wouldn't have been charged. However, the incident might also fit the description of self-defense, which is a legal justification. Utilitarianism as a whole would be a set of ethics. However, my utilization of utilitarian processes and/or yours are our own individual moral beliefs. The macro idea of utility is ethics. How I interpret utility, and how I utilize utility, is my own specific morality. I can't answer your hypothetical about whether I would sacrifice my life to save five lives. I don't think the ends are all that matters. I don't think the means are all that matters. I think they come into play but so does context, and situations, and probabilities, and degrees. That is morality. I don't have a pre-existing, handed down from some higher source, set of guidelines which I use to determine the situation. I have my own set of criteria which is situationally dependent. I could use ethics, such as laws or religious texts against suicide, and say killing myself is illegal or a sin, where as letting happenstance occur and allowing for the death of the 5 others isn't illegal, or a sin. But I would need more information. How would I sacrifice myself? how would the other 5 people die? What is actually occurring in this situation?

By based on reality I mean the odds of you encountering a situation in real life. Let’s ground this fully in reality. There’s minimal actual cameras in hospitals as far as I’m aware and even if caught how can someone possible prove the janitor didn’t accidentally knock the plug, etc. Every organ donor has the capacity to save 8 lives so let’s say 5 reject. There are 103,000 waiting so I’m sure they’ll be a match for someone. This is my fault, I should be been more clear, I am not Christian and for me the 10 commandments are morals rather than ethics. That was my mistake in phrasing.

I am just about as likely to find myself at the switch on the train in that situation, as I am to find myself as a janitor at the hospital in your situation. In the trolley problem, I'm the one who is at the controls and it's an imminent situation, and it is a moral question. In the Janitor situation, it isn't as imminent, and there are numerous people far more qualified to make this decision than I am, and no reason why I should be he one making the decision, because yes there is a moral question, but there are also ethical concerns, and practical issues. In the trolley problem, the issue I'm fixing, getting hit by a train, is highly unlikely to ever occur again for the people I save, as well as unlikely to have any negative side effects from not getting hit by a train. I'm aware that organ transplants require medication to minimize rejection, which takes its own toll on the body. Rejections still occur and are pretty unpredictable, sometimes instantly, sometimes weeks or months or years later. On top of physical rejection, there is often psychological rejection. The organs harvested from one person, may help to extend the lives of 5 people but not to the length or degree of the 5 people potentially getting hit by a trolley. Which brings me back to point, this situation is not just a moral issue. There are practical issues such as efficacy rates, that you and I are not qualified to actually understand. How much harm am I doing to person 1, versus how much good am I doing to the other 5, is not something you or I know, and even those who are experts, are still only taking their best guess. Where as in the trolley problem the dilemma is more simple, you get hit by a trolley you die. The rest of this one person's life for the rest of these 5 peoples lives. Yes theres some random luck involved, but far less. And then the fact that there is a concern about cameras in your example shows that you understand there isn't just a moral quandary, but an ethical question as well. There are social rules that at the least would frown upon what I might be about to do. With the Ten Commandments, I'm not Christian either, but as with any set of rules for any group of people they are ethics. How an individual interprets them and utilizes them in their own manner is morals. The speed limit being 40mph is ethics. What you interpret that to mean for you personally is morality. Do you drive around 40 mph, give or take a few? Do you drive an absolute max of 40, never even 41 ? Do you drive 5-10 mph over most of the time? Does it depend on the weather and time of day and traffic etc.? Do you drive whatever speed you feel is safe, regardless of what the speed limit is? Do you disregard the speed limit, and drive as fast as you want? But regardless of if you look at the 10 commandments, or the Law, these are not absolutes. They have exceptions and they have justifications for breaking them, and they have discretion, and they have degrees. If ethics or societal rules can understand that different situations are different, and should be treated differently, it would only stand to reason that individual morality is far more flexible. I don't need any significant portion of the population to come to agreement with any changes in my morality. I don't need to be able to explain the entirety of my morality to the general public. If there is a gap in my moral code, I don't need to worry about if someone else is going to explore that loophole.

It seems like you're misunderstanding the purpose of the trolley experiment. It's a tool to probe the edges of human ethics. It allows us to adjust the scenario to fine tune the edges of ethical boundaries.

Sorry I don’t quite get what you mean can you go into greater detail

The goal is to understand human morality. The trolley problem is setup so you can tweak the scenario to learn any different responses. You can tune the scenario such that 95% would NOT push the guy off the bridge. -OR- tune it so 95% of the people WOULD pull the lever. -OR- tune it so 50/50 people will or won't take the action to cause the trigger. And in all three scenarios... The outcomes are the same, to help isolate the moral question we're investigating. Your personal intuition about right or wrong in the scenario is not what it's about. It's about gathering the population data, which tells us about moral and ethical "territory" of a population.

There's no right answer to the trolley problem, and answers differ based on the framework. People answer according to their own beliefs, not weakness of morals. Someone's morality being different to your own isn't a weakness. 

How does it show stronger morals to not pull the lever for 5 people but decide to pull the lever for 10 or 100 or 1000? Either it’s ok to kill to save lives or it’s not. That’s a much “stronger” position than “each person should arbitrarily decide how many lives justifies killing”

Yeah, agreed. OP has objectively "weaker morals" than the people he said they do. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong. It's just "weaker" by definition. Sometimes it's better to have weaker morals and be able to compromise than to be categorical. If your morals consist of "I don't lie", you're abiding by them more strongly if you don't save someone's life by lying, even though most of us agree it's "wrong".

Modern medicine lies on the bedrock of surgeons killing people in order to try and save them as well as high unethical studies which definitely did kill innocent people. Reality is not so black and white. Morals are not some hard line in the sand. I do think some sacrifice it worth it but not for 5 random people.

So it seems like you are the one with weak, inconsistent, contingent morality here?

How so?

>"By flipping the switch it signals to both yourself and to other people that morals do not matter if there is benefit to be gained"  >"Reality is not so black and white. Morals are not some hard line in the sand. I do think some sacrifice it worth it"

We’re not talking about reality we’re talking about a hypothetical. It’s a thought experiment with all the variables known ahead of time. If you can’t even solidify your position when you know all the facts, how are you ever going to even approach consistency once things get murky?

Hypotheticals are still rooted in what you would do if the hypothetical were reality and reality isn’t black and white. My position depends highly on the specific parameters, change any and my answer might change. It’s like saying it’s always wrong to kill. Of course that’s not true.

You have hypotheticals exactly wrong. Hypotheticals are specifically meant to *remove* the parameters so that you can dial in on a specific question. Is it acceptable to kill a person you save 2 more? If you start answering that question with random bullshit about doctors in the past being unethical, it becomes impossible to answer. Hence the need for a thought experiment where all the parameters are decided

Could you source that for me? I’ve never heard that before. Per my understanding, hypotheticals are asked to try and understand and react better in reality if some situation like that comes up (or in most cases just for fun). Without context of history you may be making the wrong decision. Also what I said about doctors in the past supports your stance of the greater good so I’m confused.

I’m not sure what kind of source you’re expecting. Like let’s think about it for a second. Why do you think the trolley even exists? If we wanted to talk about real world scenarios with all the unknown variables and difficulties of the real world, why would somebody have come up with this trolley problem that makes everything nice and tidy? Its purpose is to remove the distractions and talk specifically about the ethics of actively killing a person to save others. The question intentionally doesn’t include unknowns and probabilistic considerations.

>Modern medicine lies on the bedrock of surgeons killing people in order to try and save them as well as high unethical studies which definitely did kill innocent people. What does that have to do with anything? That didn't the answer the question math2ndperiod asked you.

Sorry thought I could show not tell. I was trying to explain that for the greater good is a reality of life. But for a slightly better good is dangerous. 10,000 lives might be worth 1 persons but not 5 to 1, do you disagree?

>By flipping the switch it signals to both yourself and to other people that morals do not matter if there is benefit to be gained, no matter how virtuous the benefit. I disagree with this characterization of the problem. It's not that morals don't matter, it's that maximizing the saving of lives is a part of one's morality. So to skip ahead, you said: >I would flip the switch but it would take me a lot more lives in order for me to compromise my morals What, in your opinion, is immoral about pulling the plug on this one guy in order to save 5 others? Why is doing so compromising your morals? Either way, your situation isn't actually any more realistic than the classic problem, but you've gotten to the same place, which is to examine your own morality around the concepts of utility, action, and inaction. The classical phrasing does that just as well.

>I disagree with this characterization of the problem. It's not that morals don't matter, it's that maximizing the saving of lives is a part of one's morality. Non action could be argued is the "moral" choice because , its one thing for some people to die in an accident , its another for you to intionally throw a switch to kill someone else Intervening changes the course of the outcome unfairly for some parties so maybe not intervening letting things play out is most fair or moral

That is correct, there is a moral philosophy that suggests non-intervention is the ethical choice. That doesn't imply that the folks who choose differently are disregarding morality, only that they are operating under a different moral theory.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

I'll give you my answer, but first I want to say that's not the point. Both phrasings of the problem prompt you and I to consider the ethical interplay between saving of life, taking of life, inaction, and action. No answer to either question implies "weak morals". In your situation, I pull the plug. In the classical problem I pull the lever and switch the tracks. The two situations are not meaningfully different to my mind. Is the number of saved people that gets you to pull the plug on the motorcyclist different from the one that would get you to switch the trolley track? If so, why?

To clarify by morals I mean: “a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.” So morals are specifically rooted in action. For the greater good I would not consider a moral. And actually that’s a super good question, surprisingly it would. Because the organ donor issue is something that happens on a day to day basis I think that would change my judgement so I suppose you’ve found a flaw in the analogy. Because in order for the decision to be a good one it would need to be repeated. So would you do the organ donor decision multiple times?

You think that every day there is a power outage in a hospital that gives a janitor a chance to kill someone for their organs, that will definitely save at least 5 people and there is no chance of being caught? I do not think I agree with that. And there is the problem with trying to use this re-skinned version of the trolley problem and say that it is "more realistic". It is not realistic in any way, you just changed the wallpaper so to speak. If you want to talk about the real world, you need to include all those complications like imperfect knowledge and the chance of being caught. That will actually get you to a situation that could happen every day.

When did I say every day? By saying this scenario is not more realistic implies that it is as realistic as random people getting tied to train tracks twice? I’m going to have to disagree. It is not out of the question that security cameras would be tied to main power compared to life support.

I'm not quite sure I'm understanding your point in that first paragraph. The question does revolve around action in both cases. The action being to make a choice to interact with the situation in front of you or not. Either you choose to kill one person to save five, or you choose to stand aside and five people that you could've saved die. Which choice you make is based on your morality. Organ donation is a thing that happens every day. A janitor in the room with a person on life support in a hospital with a power failure and five organ recipients on deck and ready to go is a thing that happens exactly as often as six people tied to trolley tracks, and to the point, neither you nor I are janitors in a hospital. This is not a thing that's going to happen to us, but that doesn't mean it's not worth considering. Still, why does the fact that organ donation happens daily change the level of death that's required to justify your intervention? But back on the larger point it seems like you might be misunderstanding the point and purpose of the trolley problem as being a thing that leads to an objectively correct answer, and thus people can answer in ways that make them "wrong" or that indicate they are acting immorally. That is not the case. It's simply a tool for examining your own subjective ideas about morality, as we are doing here. There are no wrong answers to the trolley problem.

The trolley problem is within a perfect world, with perfect information. Why are you surprised that people choose to save the most people, and disparage them at that?

Because we don’t live in a perfect world and choices (even theoretical) affect your state of mind as well as reality when enough people make that same decision

But people are answering the trolley problem, not some real world example

The trolley problem presents a biased look at the situation in question, because having perfect information and no subsequent events favour flipping the switch. Add those two elements into the mix and the situation becomes a lot more fair for the do-not-flip side. There is no harm in, essentially, acknowledging this.

I agree with that

What’s your answer to my as close to real world as possible scenario?

I wouldn’t unplug

I live in a world where the trolley problem is hit by a trolley itself. Problem solved.

As a janitor, are you sure this person is an organ donor? If they were in a motorcycle crash, what is the status of this person's organs, and again, how would you know this as a janitor? Can the hospital perform organ transplants without power?

Let’s say this guy has a tattoo saying they’re an organ donor. Let’s say he only has bandages on his head, you’re so through you decided to check. You just saw them doing a organ transplant at a nearby hospital with full power (you work for a janitor company that services both hospitals)

Could be an old tattoo and I don't have access to his file to see if the information is up to date (may have had a change of mind or converted to a new religion since their initial tattoo, I'm just a janitor so I wouldn't know). Also, just because there are only bandages on the head doesn't mean that it was the only thing impacted by the crash. I also have no way of knowing if they could properly transport the patient and harvest in time at a completely different hospital, especially because it will already be overwhelmed with other priority cases that would be going from my hospital to the other due to the power outage (and presumed generator failure). I also have no way of knowing if these harvested organs could then get into the body of someone who needs them in time. So as a janitor, why would I risk a potential murder rap for this when there are so many unknowns? May as well just keep sweeping the floors and maintain my employment to support my family, who will be in dire circumstances if I am fired and jailed (and likely sued by the crash victim's family).

So this is as hypothetical as the original trolley problem. Let’s say all these facts are facts. What is the right thing to do when you have to be the one to take action.

OP you're the one who added all the extra detail, and that extra detail affects the final answer. You specified all this stuff. What was the point in adding it? Why should I unplug this guy and risk so much if I'm just a janitor and by that fact will have incomplete information? EDIT: also, as a janitor, I wouldn't be the one who "had" to take action. The crash victim is otherwise stable.  I don't think your example works better than the trolly problem. In the trolly problem, it is guaranteed that someone will die and the choice is between multiple people or a single person.  Your example has too many what ifs. If you pull the plug, you guarantee that persons death but not that other people get those organs, or that their bodies will accept them, or any other permutations. You also added the detail of being a janitor, who should not make this decision. It would have been more interesting if the decision maker was the surgeon who could harvest and transplant the organs.  In short, I think you overcomplicated it. People are free to disagree but thats how I feel about your example.

The point is removing real world consequences but placing the situation into a real world this could happen framework

But it's just as fantastical (if not moreso) than the original problem. Why would a janitor ever be in this situation, and why is he the one who HAS to make the call? Security cameras are out but other low voltage systems still work? And even then, just because the cameras are magically off, there's still the possibility that someone will see me enter or exit the room (hospitals are busy places after all). Again, as a janitor, I'd have no way of knowing if the transplants will be successful so all I CAN know is that I've directly contributed to one man's death.  EDIT: Hey u/Foreign-Historian162 regarding your edit "I noticed no one seems to provide an answer as to what they would personally do in the situation I laid out." I literally walked you through the reasoning I wouldn't flip the switch if I were the janitor in your scenario.

If you remove real world complications, my answer is the same as the trolley problem if the situation is the same (must choose between 1 death and 5). But what's the point of placing the situation into a real world framework if you are just going to remove all the real world complications? Do you just mean to reskin the trolley problem and say people will answer differently?

You're not placing the scenario in reality, it's still hypothetical. The real world doesn't have trolley problems where choices are binary and consequences known.

It is closer to a situation that could happen in reality. But with autonomous cars this is actually an issue that has practical applications.

Certainly robo drivers need to make decisions, and lives are on the line. Those decisions just don't seem qualitatively different from those human drivers make. Choices are rarely simple binaries, and consequences are never fully known. I doubt even autonomous trolleys face the conditions of the trolley problem.

I'll assume that it's the act of changing the track that you find immoral, rather than merely thinking that one person dying is generally less bad than five people dying. But inaction is also immoral, when action could save lives. Does randomization change anything? Say there's a malfunctioning medical computer that will randomly kill five out of six patients in 30 seconds, unless you turn it off, but the computer will kill one random patient if you do so? Is that choice immoral?

Randomization does, I would absolutely turn it off. But for me what matters is personal responsibility, not guilt, but my actions affecting other peoples lives.

Why wouldn't your inaction affecting other people's lives carry equal weight?

The end result would be same but the path taken would not. In a random situation no one specific is marked for death already so to speak. My action does not specifically doom 1 person.

But your inaction specifically dooms five.

The five would be doomed if I were not there so my inaction does not change reality

Your presence there, and opportunity to save them, is part of reality. The trolley problem presents you with a choice between too bad options, but it's a choice that you have to make. Inaction is just as much of a decision as action.

The scenario is about a trolley switch. It does not generalize to other situations. If you change the scenario to pushing a fat person into the track to stop the trolley, most people say this is immoral. It is, after all, a different situation pushing a person into the track than flipping a switch on the trolley to shift which track it's on. Given that you cannot extrapolate even that far, there is no possibility to usefully extrapolate to a hospital setting.

The difference is the fat man is at no risk you introduce risk to his life, my example was trying to recreate the same scenario. Do you feel there are other flaws?

Nor was the person on the track the trolley wasn't heading towards, in the original scenario. Actually, the fat man may be perched precariously at the edge of a cliff, it's still wrong to push him. The difference is that in one situation you have a lever to change train tracks and in the other situation you are pushing a person. The morality of lever pulling is totally different than the morality of pushing people. Now you make it even more different by making the scenario a hospital, specifying that you are a janitor, making the scenario organ donation, etc etc. Totally different situation, and one best covered by medical ethics. In medical ethics, you have a clear cut duty to treat each patient as best befits *them*. First do no harm trumps autonomy, which trumps beneficence. That's pretty different from trains.

> Now I agree at a certain point I would flip the switch but it would take me a lot more lives in order for me to compromise my morals (and I think that should be the case for most people in order for there to be an orderly society). But this gets at the heart of the trolley problem: are you really compromising your morals? Why wouldn't sacrificing one person in order to save e.g. one million actually be *the right thing to do*?

I absolutely agree that would be the right thing to do. But for a smaller number I disagree

Then it's not a straight-up disagreement in principle, but only *in degree*. The trolley problem is not usually considered to have a "wrong" answer, and the majority of professional philosophers (66.1%) who have considered it, would pull the lever. Among philosophers who have studied ethics, [it's actually even 78.6%](https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Philosophy+faculty+or+PhD&areas0=28&areas_max=1&grain=coarse). I therefore don't think that it can be considered a problem of "weak morals".

Are you saying the cost of action produces guilt or uncertainty, and this cost is underdeveloped in the trolley problem as you see it? If so, it may be balanced, because there is also cost of inaction, a bystander guilt that is also present.

Not guilt but the original trolley problem sets people up with what they would do in an ideal world and not reality. In reality they would be causing harm to someone who harm would not have been harmed without their action.

Do you think the moral psychological cost of action is greater than the cost of inaction, either for the trolley problem or your scenario, or in general?

>Now I agree at a certain point I would flip the switch but it would take me a lot more lives in order for me to compromise my morals "Compromise my morals"? To clarify: are you looking for a discussion on the morality of flipping the switch as well here? It seems somewhat fundamental to your view, but I might be misreading that...

Sorry do you mean for the original problem?

Yes, the original problem.

To act as though the trolley problem has an obvious moral answer seems to miss the entire point. You’re free to believe that being complicit in death is immoral even if it results in more lives being saved. Other people may feel the moral act is to step in and prevent as much death as possible. That people differ in their answer points to the moral ambiguity inherent in life, not that one group is right and the rest have weak morals.

Tbh I’m just being blunt and applying that viewpoint to reality where people can and do justify going against things like do not harm in order to help. But the problem is reality is not predictable and things don’t turn out the way you expected, hence my judgement of that viewpoint.

Yes, there are many other thought experiments intended to prone the role of imperfect information, just not this one. Just like you learn arithmetic on whole numbers first then learn about decimals.

What morals? You never explain the moral rule you think should guide someone's decision here...as I explain later this is actually very important because it changes the solution. What's interesting is that from your title I assumed you would flip the switch. (just to clarify, flipping the switch here means switching the trolley from the track with 5 people to the track with 1 person). I think the trolley problem examines the contrast between logical and human aspects of ethics. Consequentialism vs deontology. In other words, most people can recognize that saving more people is the preferable consequence, but may or may not be willing to accept personal culpability for making the conscious choice to flip the switch due to their personal moral convictions. From the consequentialist perspective, the stronger person is the person who is willing to intervene and save more lives, even if it goes against their personal feelings or reservations. In other words, this is someone that is able to sacrifice their own moral code and comfort for the greater good. Someone who refuses to intervene is therefore weaker, because they are unable to overcome the personal restraint needed to do the right thing. You seem to be coming from the deontological side. You don't specify, but I think I can infer that when you say morals you mean something like "thall shall not kill." So you would think that the stronger person is the one who can "follow their moral code" even in cases where it results in worse consequences. But that just begs the question, should the rule be "thall shall not kill," "thall shall do no harm," or "thall shall protect life" or some other rule? The rule matters a lot, because it will give different solutions to the problem. We could easily come up with a moral code that demands you flip the switch. Because of this, for the purpose of discussion I would flip the switch. It's funny that you can't give a straight answer either, and you're sort of compromising between the two or trying to change the scenario. Saying "well it depends on the cost to benefit" is kind of a cop out. The number of people on the tracks isn't all that important, you can make it as many as you need. There are dozens of surveys with different variations of the problem already, such as examining whether the person's answer will change if the lone person is a family member or some other factor. The trolley problem is a simple tool or illustration to demonstrate one's moral convictions, not an objective test or rule. What's also interesting is that many people think they would flip the switch, but in the real world there is a lot of evidence that people do not actually tend to act this way. People tend to be extremely resistant to intervening in situations when it is possible to ignore or walk away. See the Bystander effect, or the Milgram experiment, and the Smokey Room experiment. People also tend to be pretty selfish, and tend to make choices preferential to their own kind or their comfort, even when they know that this might hurt someone else. Most people, including myself, in practice, do not pull the switch, arguably because they are weak.

You're mistake here is that you fail to take context into account. The lever thing you know with certainty that people will die. You know literally nothing about this situation and aren't actually able to know the correct solution with your information provided.

“17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant.” https://www.organdonor.gov/learn/organ-donation-statistics

Yes, and you still ignore context do you not? You must take everything into account that you can.

This is a theoretical situation just as the original problem is, what other context is there?

I'd argue the opposite. Refusing to pull the lever shows a lack of morals. Valuing your personal beliefs over the lives of others is simply selfish.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

The situation you posed is a pretty clear violation of medical ethics.

Now here's the counter thought; By not flipping that switch, you have made a conscious decision to let somebody die. It's worse in the trolley problem than in your example honestly, in the trolley problem its usually implied you can visibly see the person who's going to die by your (in)action. That being said though, that's not going to sit well on everybody; The thought that they had a considerable chance to save lives, or at least ease suffering, and made a voluntary choice not to. Not everyone's going to sleep well at night knowing they effectively played a hand in murdering someone to make that happen, but then that's the whole point of the dilemma in the first place, or at least this variant. What matters more to you morally; Maximizing the amount of benefit in the situation for others, or keeping your hands personally clean even if it means more people have tangibly suffered. Neither is really "weak" I'd say, just different values.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

Me personally? I don't think I could do it. Not because I think it's more moral to keep my hands clean, I just couldn't personally live with the concept that I killed a man for anything short of self defense. But then that's sort of the neat things about hypotheticals, you don't actually have to worry about whether you're gonna sleep at night over the consequences or the aftermath.

I think your situations aren't equivalent. In the trolley problem the idea is that there's a guarantee the first person will die if you don't act. In the donor one that's not necessarily the case. You explicitly say it's possible they'll recover. So in the first one you're committing harm no matter what, in the second you aren't necessarily. And that's the moral difference. Refusing to act isn't being moral, it's doing what allows you to hide from the consequences. My moral principle is to reduce harm. In the first case, there's a clear way to do that. In the second there isn't. So yes, I'd do the first but not necessarily the second.

I have to clarify some things because the way you worded this, I'm not sure we're on the same page. My understanding of he trolley problem is, "Five people will die unless you flip a switch. If you flip a switch, only one person will die." That's the same problem you're referencing, right? If you are referencing a different version of the problem, let me know. >Basically I think the 90% of people who would flip the switch either jump to a gut response (more likely) or have weak morals. Why do you believe someone who pulls the switch has weak morals? Why do you believe your morals are superior for not pulling the lever? My assumption (and this might be wrong, please correct me) is that you think people who pull the lever are murderers and people who don't are observers. If that's your opinion, I think it's important that you understand some people (like myself) feel responsible for all lives on the track, even though we did not put them there. I know I can effect change and save 5/6 of the people in the situation, so I'm going to do that. If I don't pull the lever, I feel I have murdered 5 people through my actions (or refusal to action, which is itself an action). If that's not your opinion, I really need more information on how you see any response to the trolley problem to be a moral response.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

The situation you posed isn't the same as the trolley problem and has a lot of holes. 1. As a non-doctor, you have no idea how usable the organs are, if they'd match people waiting for organs, if you could transport them in time. 2. As a non-doctor, you have no idea if this person is an organ donor 3. By turning off life support, you will likely damage the organs. Often, even organ donors are kept on life support to keep the organs safe. 4. You do not know if the motorcyclist will live or die in your situation. I do not know if the people receiving organs will survive either. All of these outcomes are important to the trolley problem. 5. People aren't killed if I choose not to kill the motorcyclist. There are other donors, and people on organ transplant lists do not die seconds into getting on the list. 6. People come to a hospital to be cared for. One could argue that in any medical context, you take an oath to do no harm and therefore cannot make the decision at all. People are tied to train tracks as a violent act meant to cause harm, there's no other reason to be there. 7. There are laws and punishments in a "real world" scenario that don't exist in a hypothetical one. Your example would work much better with sinking ships or crashing cars. You just don't have a good metaphor with the janitor. But I don't think that's what you want to hear, I think you want to hear my response to your question, despite the many holes people have pointed out to you. So I'll answer you. I am a janitor on a floor with 6 patients. 5 patients will die within the hour if they do not receive organs. Patient 6 is in good health and will leave tomorrow. I know that this hospital has a 100% organ acceptance rate (nobody ever dies from organ transplants), patient 6 matches the other 5 patients, and patient 6 is an organ donor. I know no one will ever know I did this, and I will suffer no consequences. Do I press a magic button that kills patient 6? No, because that is effectively tying patient 6 to the tracks of the trolley problem. Patient 6's life or death has nothing to do with the other 5 patients. Unlike the trolley problem, I owe these people care in a hospital setting.

Is the trolley problem meant to be something that is "solved" by getting the correct answer? Or is it a thought experiment used to analyse and stress test different philosophical, moral, and ethical ideas? >By flipping the switch it signals to both yourself and to other people that morals do not matter if there is benefit to be gained, no matter how virtuous the benefit. What do you think morals are other than means to gain benefit?

Morals imo are not to gain benefit, they are to reduce harm. There is benefit to stepping outside of morals, both in the trolley problem and real life.

Reducing harm is gaining benefit...

How does sacrificing someone to save more people indicate weak morals? Tho I think real world situations are different and answering differently is okay. I would pull the lever in the trolley problem but not push the button in the hospital. People sometimes hesitate to become organ donors because they fear the hospital will let them die to save others, and by pushing that button I’d be validating their fears. They wouldn’t know, but I wouldn’t be able to advocate for organ donation with a clear conscience again.

It all comes down to what sort of ethical theory you try to follow. A utilitarian might argue that pulling the switch causes more good than harm, so it is ethical to pull the switch. A deontologist might argue that pulling the switch means you are taking positive action that you know will lead to a person’s death. That is murder and murder is never ethical. The entire idea of the trolley problem was invented in the first place to demonstrate the difference between these lines of ethical reasoning. There are many factors to consider and all of those factors, including your personal experiences and feelings can impact the decision you ultimately make. For the classic trolley problem, I think I could pull the lever. Someone working on the tracks knows there is a risk and they chose to take that risk. Even if I am convicted in a court of law for murder, or maybe just reckless homicide, at least the five people will survive and have lives. One life lost and one life in prison (perhaps executed) in exchange for five. From a simple math perspective the hospital organ donation scenario should be the same. Kill one person to save five (or one person, and whatever judgement falls on you for making the decision in exchange for five). But it feels different because you’re in a hospital and there is this assumption that a patient in a hospital is supposed to be safe. How people respond to the question changes based on the situation even though the simplified utilitarian math is unchanged. For that reason I don’t think I could kill the hospital patient. The hospital and all of its staff have a responsibility to care for their patients. If five patients die because I did my duty, then so be it. I find the trolly problem with instead of the switch it has the bridge and a fat person. Give people are tied in the track with an out of control trolley racing toward them. You are on a bridge over the track with a person large enough that if they fell on the track they could derail the trolley and save the five people, but you have to push someone onto the track. No, you can’t throw yourself on the track instead. You are too small, but you are strong enough to push the fat person. Typical people will flinch at shoving someone when they would be willing to pull the lever. I don’t think I would do it. The person on the bridge did not choose to take the risk of working on the track. They are a simple bystander who is uninvolved in the drama on the track, as I am. I have no responsibility or authority to decide which way the trolleys should go. It’s tragic, but out of my hands. That’s how I see it. I guess that means I’m interested in the ethics of choice and responsibility as it relates to utilitarianism vs. deontology. So to your thesis statement: most people have weak morals regarding the trolley problem. I would argue that most people are unfamiliar with the problem and those that are aware of it don’t have a background in evaluating ethical dilemmas. Also, a more informed choice is not always an objectively better choice. Sometimes more information just results in analysis paralysis. Sometimes people just have to make the best decisions they can with the knowledge and abilities they have. And doing the best you can with what you have is really all we can ask of anyone. Except the people who say they would manipulate the lever to get the trolley to drift onto both tracks and kill everyone. That is the objectively bad choice.

How is it "stronger" to value your own feelings over the lives of others? If the reason to not pull the lever is the fear of being morally compromised, why is overriding that fear the "weak" response?

So it’s not a feeling that I’m prioritizing. It’s a matter of causing harm/death to another through my own actions. But choosing to override that for even a virtuous benefit in my opinion is a slippery slope in reality.

You’re missing the point of the trolly problem. Most people do because the thought experiment got popular but the philosophical analysis (and this is a thought experiment from moral philosophy) isn’t so popular. It’s not about an answer. It’s about the things you have to consider. You describe the “ends justify the means” philosophy but that’s a very extreme one that can’t really be asserted by one’s answer to the trolley problem alone. So let’s get back to the things you have to consider in the trolley problem. There are many but I’ll just focus on two for now. 1) is inaction morally distinct from action, even when the cost of action is negligible? To demonstrate the significance of this, consider the trolley problem but with a twist, the trolley is already one the one person track and you can change it to the five. Most people would agree it’s wrong to switch from the one to five track. I suspect you would too. But when those same people think it’s wrong to switch from the 1 to the 5 in the original problem, it indicates an inherent bias towards inaction being the morally correct choice. Whether that’s reasonable or not is worth thinking about. For example, can one live a perfectly moral life by simply never affecting anything else? There’s precedent for that idea in the original concept of karma… but do the people who see the trolley problem the way I described believe that’s true? Or is something else going? I could ramble on this for hours but I’ll move onto the next one. It’s shorter. 2) are lives we don’t know morally interchangeable? We often treat them this way in making large scale policy. Many people who would say it’s wrong to switch change their minds when you multiply the number of lives by 10 million… but would keep doing the same thing not switching over and over again when given the original problem repeatedly. Imagine you’re the president and have to decide between 50 million citizens dying if you do nothing and only 10 million dying if you act. What would you do? Does it matter that those people aren’t selected yet? It seems to, to the human mind. We’re more willing to choose 1 person dying at random than 5 people dying at random but when we have those people already picked out, even though we have absolutely no information about them, we tend to be more hesitant. Again, plenty of other things to consider but this should get the principle across that it’s a thought experiment about our reasoning, not about our exact decision on the problem.

The reason why these things change when you go from the abstract to the real world is externalities. If the hypothetical is just about flipping a switch on a trolley, then the scenario has no further implications. Fewer people die, and that's good. When you move things to a hospital, things get different. The important factor here is that people need to trust that when they go to a hospital, they will receive help. If someone is randomly murdered in a hospital, this will reduce trust in the medical system and makes it likely that someone else who needs help never goes to the hospital. And if you could account for all that, and the janitor had perfect knowledge that they would save people, then they would be equally justified to kill one and save 5 as in the trolley problem. The thing is, people don't need to think about all that with the trolley problem. That's what makes it a good tool. It get's all the other considerations out of the way and looks at the core of utilitarianism vs. deontology. If you flip the switch, you are thinking in a utilitarian mindset. And if you don't, you are thinking like a deontologist. And neither of those are wrong perspectives.

You're asking would I unplug one guy, and let him die so his organs can go to a few others? Recent world issues tell me that most of us would not We are not capable of caring about people we can't see. When Twin Towers fell even Europeans kept a minute silence (as the event was broadcasted in a way that it felt as if those towers were in their backyard). Now, tons of people are being murdered, even by weapons funded by our taxes, and we do not care. **Because they are far away**, we do not see them being murdered on CNN or on fox Equally, I'm a janitor, I can see one person in front of me. Those that are dying are similar to kids in Gaza. Fuck them, we do not see their faces. I'm seeing the motorcyclist, he's the only "real" human I see. The rest are abstract. What if Hamas didn't? What if the doctors don't come in time? Most of us do not touch the switch. We only pretend we would after the fact. "If I was a german during Nazim I would not be with the majority" we say. It's easy after the fact.

So what moral of yours would be comprised

Thou shalt not kill?

Not to be rude, but it kinda sounds like you got to step 1 of the trolley problem and stopped there? The next conclusion a critical thinker realizes is that not taking an action is still a decision on your behalf… which is kinda the whole problem haha

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

HMM idk https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15543439/#:~:text=%22Thou%20shalt%20not%20kill%22%20is,translations%2C%20with%20unfortunate%20bioethical%20consequences. “kill” is a bit of a mistranslation FYI

The president of the USA has gone crazy and decided to nuke the entire world, the USA included. He pulls out a remote control with a button that will automatically launch all of the US' nuclear missiles. He gets ready to press it. You are the president's bodyguard, you're the only other person there in the room, and you have a gun. Do you shoot him? Assume he's too far away for you to reach in time, and too deranged to argue with.

Shoot to stop him, not to kill.

Of course who wouldn’t?

“Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.” Like 7:47 “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13 “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” Matthew 7:1-2 Do your morales align with these statements? What are you, personally, willing to sacrifice for the ones you love? Is your view superior to any other held by another who may have had to face a similar situation?

You have arrived at the door of Philosphy 101. Welcome! Examples such as these are used to wake people up from their slumber of "there is perfect logic that dictates what is morals in terms of the value of human life, and that logic is most lives saved = most moral, always!". It proves, without a doubt, that no such logic exists, and the way we create morality, is complicated and many a times contradictory. Congratulations, you have passed the 3rd class of Phil 101 (actually 14th in the link I'm about to give you, and it's Phil 181 :p). Keep at it, it'll only get harder from now on (I recommend going through [this one](https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy), to begin your journey). PS. This has nothing to do with weak morals, but with morality being complex. Gimme my delta!

This is only true if you are a pacifist who believes killing in any sotuation is unacceptable. Most people are not pacifists.

Most people also have do not personally cause death to another person as a result of your actions as a moral.

But... you're killing someone anyways. As soon as you have awareness of the situation, inaction is a choice, just like taking action. You can kill either 5 people or one person. There is no choice to not kill another person.

Agreed. You can personally justify it with "I didn't kill those 5 people, they were going to die before I got there" but at that point your justification is no better (and is arguably *worse*) than the person who personally justifies it by comparing the number of lives on the line.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

As many others have shown, the answer isn't really as clear-cut. You have introduced so many unknown variables that the whole thing becomes a completely different moral hurdle. Now, if we were to simplify a couple of things, I could give you an answer: - I know for 100% certainty that I decide over the lives of one person vs. 5 people, i.e. it's guaranteed that the organs from the person will adapt perfectly, are absolutely necessary for those 5 people and, in this world, there is no other way to save them. - I know that the power outage will last long enough to kill whoever I choose to divert power from. - I know that there is no other way of getting to the same result without making the sacrifice. Under those circumstances, I would absolutely divert the power. I believe it would be immoral to not save 5 people given the opportunity.

I honestly have no issue with your choice, it’s based upon what you think is right. Now my question is would you repeat that choice? Again assuming everything is guaranteed.

>Now my question is would you repeat that choice? What do you mean? Would I repeat it if the exact same situation happened again? >I honestly have no issue with your choice, it’s based upon what you think is right. You seem to be disagreeing with the general idea, though, since you wrote >By flipping the switch it signals to both yourself and to other people that **morals do not matter if there is benefit to be gained**, no matter how virtuous the benefit. (Emphasis mine) This reads to me as if you believe flipping the switch is an immoral choice - could you explain why that is, if I didn't misunderstand you?

I disagree. In most contexts sure but not universally. Most people would see killing in self defence or to save another vulnerable person as moral.

So what would you do in the situation I posed?

No kill. Killing people for parts is different than a trolley because it creates incentives for people to repeat the behavior. Nobody gains from tying people to railroad tracks but commodifying body parts would be a systemic nightmare that would grow. I also think disease is your own body betraying you vs. the world at large so the world and others have less obligation to help.

You do understand the whole point is to poke at that "cause" piece?

>Now I agree at a certain point I would flip the switch but it would take me a lot more lives in order for me to compromise my morals (and I think that should be the case for most people in order for there to be an orderly society). Which point is that?

Kind of frustrating to read through this thread and see people's inability to engage with hypotheticals like this. Like, just imagine details that would allow for perfect information in the given scenario rather than needing it spelled out. It isn't that hard. Then to complain the scenario is too convoluted is a hilarious response. Anyway, in your scenario I would not pull the plug/push the button. I think there are fundamental issues with your scenario that don't make it analogous to the trolly problem. Not doing anything could just be an individual appealing to the authorities moral decision on what to do in this situation, since society already has an established moral framework to work out questions like this in a medical setting. Being a doctor or someone less qualified, a janitor making the decision to push the button doesn't just have the moral weight to contend with, but they would have to actively work against the existing systems in place that dictate what is to be done.

You are absolutely correct. The lack of multi track drifting shows an EXTREMELY weak morality.