The Trolly problem presents you with this dilemma of a seemingly impossible choice: you either kill the person tied to the train tracks or you run over a larger group of people tied to the other side of the train tracks.
It’s a dilemma that is sort of trying to sell you on the idea that sacrifice is good as long as many people benefit from it. In this instance, they are saying “well, yes the person on the train tracks will die, but everyone on the other side of the train tracks will survive.”
So it’s the idea of the common good.
But what we should really be asking ourselves is: who the heck created this situation in the first place? Who is trying people to train tracks? Who is the psychopath behind this?
Nobody wouldn’t be in this predicament if there wasn’t a psycho behind the scenes orchestrating this.
And you know what? It is the same in real life. These situations wouldn’t exist in real life if there wasn’t someone creating them artificially? And who does things like this in real life? Politicians.
They are the ones who cripple different groups of society with their awful laws and regulations, and then they are the ones who say: “if you don’t elect me, this group of people will suffer, I’m the only one who can save them!” And often the “saving” comes at the price of sacrificing another group.
Let’s take for example the issue of wealth; people’s wealth. Under normal circumstances, people are out there making money in many different ways and at many different levels. Some make a lot of money, some make less money. But everyone had the opportunity to make a living using whatever skills they have.
But then the government gets involved, and they make it so you can’t sell your services unless you buy an expensive government permit. So now you can’t work and now you urgently need money, so the government steps in again and says, “vote me into office, and I’ll be sure to give you some money vouchers so you don’t starve.”
But those vouchers are of course paid by taxing another group who is also just trying to work and make a living. So it’s the trolley problem.
It is the government saying, “I’m going to pull the lever and let the train run over this group of taxpayers, to save these other people I’m also responsible for crippling.” So it’s the trolley problem.
However, we shouldn’t be trying to decide who to sacrifice. We should instead be on the lookout for the psychos forcing us to choose sacrifice in the first place.
And to close this brief entry, I’d like to refer to this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on the Trolly Problem. Please read it carefully, It’s quite insightful:
Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs go even further and assert that the thought experiment is not only useless but also downright detrimental to human psychology. The authors opine that to make cold calculations about hypothetical situations in which every alternative will result in one or more gruesome deaths is to encourage a type of thinking that is devoid of human empathy and assumes a mandate to decide who lives or dies and I have no ability to stop it, how is my choice a "moral" choice between meaningfully different options, as opposed to a horror show I've just been thrust into, in which I have no meaningful agency at all?"[31]
And know what’s a horror show? Our world’s politics. Watch out for the psychos trying people to train tracks, watch out for politicians.
This article is also available as a video:
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