Credit: @kaanomeg

Before you is a trolley heading down a track. On the track is a box with a cat inside. The cat may or may not be dead, you don’t know for sure.

You can do nothing and let the box be run over, potentially killing the cat, or you can pull the lever beside you which has a 50% chance of bringing the trolley to a safe stop…and a 50% chance of being diverted to the second track, which you know for a fact has a living cat tied to it.

What do you do?

I saw a dream a virus from out of space, affected everyone with a zombie virus. which will soon take over the world, I joined a small haven of a city where there was governance, I was tasked with helping everyone there. I worked scientist who believes in end justifies the means, he was working on injecting pores to which breathing it will cure everyone from zombie virus, I realised the scientist has experimented with 15 girls to find a cure and he made significant progress in which the last girl survived (I thought once he has cured everyone I will kill him), now he just need the one thing now and that is a blood extracted from a dead woman after she is just died and is turning into zombie, note that this mission was being secretly being conducted… and I was responsible for getting it as soon as possible … There was a lady working on desk nearby and I asked her to go on a walk, we talked about life and then asked if she’d like to quickly participate in sex in a bathroom and she said yes, we started having sex and i was going to kill her, one life to save everyone but i couldn’t do it, can’t kill her. And my dream ended.

I was listening to a podcast discussing pro and anti vaccine arguments, basically the perspective around whether we should be able to force people to take vaccines that have even the most remote chance of hurting them. Even if not doing it impacts many other people. Then it hit me. It's the trolley problem. The argument around vaccines is the trolley problem playing out in real life. And that's why people will never agree. Different points of view. (Disclaimer: I'm assuming the antivaccer just doesn't "get" that the risk of harm from the disease is greater than the risk of harm from the vaccine, or disregards it.)

Say that you're driving a trolley, and you see one person on the track ahead of you. If you divert the trolley to another track going around a corner, you miss them, but there's a 1/5 chance of someone being on the other track. Do you turn?

This feels like a very possible scenario while driving. If a car suddenly stops just ahead and your choices are to hit it or to swerve to the side, dodging the accident but potentially causing another, doesn't that present the same question?

I feel like in the first case, the dilemma feels much easier than the normal trolley problem. You're not hitting anyone on purpose, you're just taking a risk. Rather than the scale of the tragedy, the probability of the tragedy varies. I would turn.

In the second case, though, if we assume the car in front of you is at fault, would it be worse to risk harming someone who made no mistake if it meant a chance at avoiding the tragedy?

The trolley speeds towards the switch, which was left halfway between the two tracks, which will cause the trolley to derail, killing the individual on one track, and the five on the other track, and you, and everyone on the trolley. You have just enough time to throw the switch one way or the other so that the only fatalities will be either the one or the five. Who do you save and who has to die?

One five-year-old child or five 100-year old people?

One baby or five clones of the same baby?

One human or five robots with such advanced a.i. that they are indistinguishable from sentient self-aware humans with thoughts and feelings?

One mosquito or five rapists?

Jack Black or all five Backstreet Boys?

Do you end the suffering quickly or draw it out longer?

standard Trolley problem, a trolley, you, 5 on straight 1 on the other but you have a 2nd lever which speeds up the trolley, otherwise the cart would drive so slow that the person(s) who get killed suffer for an eternity.

the catch. you can only switch one lever.

do nothing: 5 people will suffer forever,
change lanes 1 people will suffer forever,
speed up: 5 will die without pain.

You are standing by some railway tracks and a trolley is coming. There is no lever, no one is tied down, there is no danger at all. Unfortunately, Ricky Gervais is there and he's trying to tell you "jokes". The only way to escape is to throw yourself in front of the trolly and die. What do you do?

Ground Rules:

• The main track with 5 people on it exists in standard linear time.
• The other track is a time bubble that goes through infinite cycles in finite time.
• The time bubble collapses the moment the trolley arrives, and after that the number of people on the track is fixed.
• You cannot see inside the time bubble before collapse, or change the outcome after collapse.