Cow and Boy Classics by Mark Leiknes for June 28, 2022
June 27, 2022
June 29, 2022
Transcript:
"So a train is barreling out of control." "It's going to hit five people who are standing on the tracks unless you pull a lever and switch the rails." "Switching the rails will send the train into only one person standing on the other set of tracks. Do you switch the rails?" "No. Why punish the only person smart enough to avoid an oncoming train?"
This is an ethics thought exercise known as ‘The Trolley Problem’. In some versions, the person alone on the track is someone close to you.
Disclaimer: I didn’t learn this from studying ethics, but from an episode of “The Good Place”. However, it’s a very real thing, first posited by Judith Jarvis Thomson (I looked that part up).