OC just for you! ♥️
There surely must've been a more comprehending way to phrase the dilemma.
Half the fun of trolley problems is adapting them to puzzles for which they are utterly unsuitable:
Show
Noise cancelling earphones sucks at blocking voices. Just yell and ask if there are others.
Or spit, or blow air at your potential neighbor, or fart in their general direction!
Spit to the left and right. If it spits back then there is someone else and I'm on the main track.
From a purely utilitarianism perspective, assuming all utility is linear and unscaled:
5/6 chance I'm on the side track * 1 person saved = 5/6
1/6 chance on the main track * 1/10 chance my switch is real * 10 people saved = 1/6
Seems pretty clear that you should not flip the switch. However, if I am on the main track, this thinking will lead to no-one flipping the switch and no lives saved whereas everyone thinking it will lead to a guaranteed save -> utility of 10/6.
If I can assume more than half the people can be rational and will think like me then I should flip the switch.
If I cannot, I should not flip the switch.
Thank you! <3 My guess is that no to the first, since I have a 1/3 chance of being in the forked path, vs 1/15 of being in the straight path and my lever being connected. However, in the second situation I would flip it, since I'd only kill 1/3 of all people (myself every time), versus 2/3 (myself included) if I don't flip it.
My guess is that no to the first, since I have a 1/3 chance of being in the forked path, vs 1/15 of being in the straight path and my lever being connected.
Suppose you live in a kingdom where everyone is as selfish as you, and you've seen on TV many situations exactly like this one where people were tied to the tracks - usually one at a time and occasionally 10 at a time. (The villain has been prolific.) You've seen them all follow this logic and choose not to flip their switch, yet out of ~1500 people you have seen in peril this way, ~1000 of them have died. If only their logic had convinced them (and you) otherwise, 1000 of them could have selfishly survived! Doesn't seem very logical to follow a course of action that kills you more often than its opposite.
(If you don't want to imagine a kingdom where everyone is selfish, you can imagine one where x% are selfish and (100-x)% are altruistic, or some other mixture maybe with y% of people who flip the lever randomly back and forth and z% who cannot even understand the question. The point is that the paradox still exists.)
Edit: I can see now how in a 100% altruistic kingdom, where you are the only selfish one and you know for sure that everyone else will logically altruistically pull the lever, it makes sense for you to not pull the lever. Presumably there is some population x% split (44% selfish/56% altruistic?) where your selfish decision will have to reverse. Weird to think that your estimate of the selfishness of the rest of the population has a relevance on your decision!
It's a really cool puzzle, nice job! The solution being a huge prisoner's dilemma makes it all the more interesting and deep. I guess an iterated version resulting in collaboration would be difficult in this particular case, though ;)
I am confused as to why anyone would not flip the switch? Flipping the switch seems to have somewhere between a 10% and 100% chance of saving your life, and not flipping the switch seems to guarantee death?
Is there some kind of penalty to flipping the switch that I am missing?
Or is the drawing misleading, and in Scenario B, there is also supposed to be a person drawn on the other track?
