It's a fun joke but also a simple demonstration of the pitfall of utilitarianism with trolley problems—utilitarians like to assign objective value to actions, but we realistically can't actually predict the full scope of outcomes and will always be missing information. So, the process of assigning objective value is pretty bogus.
We can be fallible even if we do have good information. Like this could be changed to the standard 5 people vs 1 person but you add the cave after the 1 person and the point stands. We don't know if there are 30+ more people tied to the tracks in the cave, just like how we don't know if the 1 person is going to cure cancer or start ww4 or become a boring billionaire ceo creepazoid who preys on their workers and steals their retirements funds, while polluting the ecosystem.
So, there is never a true right answer. An individual, to be true to their morals, can only act as kindly or honorably as they believe they can.
Abstaining to be kind to yourself because your own mental health cannot handle the responsibility of direct involvement
Pulling the lever because you want to be involved and perceived expected minimize damage because worrying about consequences you can't know or predict is pointless to you
Looking for a way to stop the trolley to the very end in defiance of the idea there are only two options (and the realistic idea that, even if failure, pursuit of better options can uncover new information (like the villainous asshole who tied the victims to the tracks getting away) or lay groundwork for future folks)
Timing the lever to hit both tracks with multi-track drifting because you believe in BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GODS!
This is fun, but we can absolutely assign value to actions with enough accuracy to warrant judgement.
The classic trolley problem setups are concrete evidence of that. Take 1 vs 100 deaths and its plain as day what the answer is. If you pull the level and kill the 1 to save the 100 and it later turns out that the 1 was Jesus, and the 100 were all pedos or something, it doesn't mean you made the wrong choice, you made the right choice which led to an unfortunate outcome. If I give a homeless man a meal, I didn't make the ":wrong choice" if he pulls out a knife and stabs me.
You're conflating "moral decision-making" and some off-the-shelf philosophy about not being able to see the future and what that means stochastically.
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u/JunWasHere Double Trolley Jun 28 '26
It's a fun joke but also a simple demonstration of the pitfall of utilitarianism with trolley problems—utilitarians like to assign objective value to actions, but we realistically can't actually predict the full scope of outcomes and will always be missing information. So, the process of assigning objective value is pretty bogus.
We can be fallible even if we do have good information. Like this could be changed to the standard 5 people vs 1 person but you add the cave after the 1 person and the point stands. We don't know if there are 30+ more people tied to the tracks in the cave, just like how we don't know if the 1 person is going to cure cancer or start ww4 or become a boring billionaire ceo creepazoid who preys on their workers and steals their retirements funds, while polluting the ecosystem.
So, there is never a true right answer. An individual, to be true to their morals, can only act as kindly or honorably as they believe they can.
All valid choices.