Starting to think all the backlash to the idea of the trolley problem is just people trying to hide the fact that, deep down, they know they would be too scared to pull the lever.
I suppose one of the advantages I've gained from having been in the military is that I went from a suspicion I would have the conviction to make those kinds of calls, an absolute certainty that I do have it. I've held lives in my hands, but thankfully I rose to my training and my convictions. I chose the best of the options I had available to me at the time.
There is nothing shameful about being too afraid of making the decision, in my view. But yeah, it's cowardice to project your anxiety by claiming the philosophical quandary itself is meaningless.
No reason to wonder. A ton of people openly bragged about how morally pure they were for not pulling the lever in 2024. They just hate it when you contextualize it like that and insist they were taking a third option to sound less terrible when their actions are 1:1 compared to the thought experiment.
If anything, the reason I reject it is because I consider the thought experiment ITSELF to be cowardly.
All human lives are worth the same amount, and any LOSS of human life is as large a tragedy as any other amount of lost human life. You aren't doing a GOOD thing by condemning one person to die to save four more, you're not even doing a BETTER thing. It might be the more valuable thing in a coldly utilitarian point of view, but from my moral stance death is death. You don't get to compare and contrast your way out of that.
You’d be too scared to pull the lever huh?
People hate the trolley problem because it is inherent to the problem that choosing not to act is an active choice. That's why they reject the problem itself rather than making an argument for choosing to not pull the lever. They aren't afraid to pull the lever- they're afraid to admit that their priority is keeping their own hands clean.
Hear hear.
You can tell by the "well I'M too moral and pure to think killing one person to save five is good - ". If that person had engaged with the experiment honestly they'd know that it's not ABOUT trying to establish one course as the moral one. It's not about being able to, as @darkladynyara says, come out with your hands clean; you won't. It's about making you consider what you should and would do when all the choices available are bad ones.
"All human lives are worth the same amount, and any LOSS of human life is as large a tragedy as any other amount of lost human life" is such an obvious logical contradiction that I'm almost impressed at someone being able to come up with that sentence, write it down, and still not see the problem.
