The Trolley Problem
After watching the video answer the questions 1-5:
How would you respond to each of the five variants of the Trolley Problem described bellow? You must justify your reasoning.
For each scenario, think about whether or not the answers to the following two questions differ: What is the right thing to do, and what would you do?
Variants of the Trolly Problem
1) Original problem – you are the trolley driver; the decision is to pull switch or not.
2) Fat man variant – you are an observer on a bridge; the decision is to push fat man or not.
3) Fat man/villain variant – you are an observer on a bridge; the decision is to push fat man or not; fat man is the villain who put the five people in danger on the tracks.
4) Loved one variant – you are the trolley driver; the decision is to pull the switch or not; the one person that would die if you pull the switch is a dear loved one of yours (parent, child, spouse, etc.)
5) Man sleeping in his yard variant – you can divert trolley’s path by colliding another trolley into it, but if you do, both will be derailed and go down a hill, and into a yard where a man is sleeping in a hammock. He would be killed.
