Looking Down The Line, Clearing The Tracks: A Different Take On The Trolley Problem

What’s the right answer to the trolley problem?

There isn’t one. The way we normally look at the trolley problem, there’s only bad choices. The trolley problem is about examining how we look at harm reduction when there’s nothing except for bad choices.

There’s the traditional two choices — do nothing and more people die, or do something active to harm someone … but save more people.

But in addition to those (and The Good Place‘s solution to the trolley problem), there’s two others that get tossed about every four years in this country. {1}

There’s walking away from the choice. Saying that both choices are bad and evil because someone dies either way. But that is making a choice — without your action, the trolley will continue on the straightaway and kill more people.

What about defying the paradigm? Derailing the dilemma — literally. Break the frame of the dilemma by getting the trolley off the tracks. Choosing a path that isn’t one of the offered choices.

Sounds great, except that derailing the trolley (if it works) is going to probably kill all the people in the trolley. And if your attempt does not derail it entirely, then you’re still choosing for more people to be run over by the trolley.

Yes, it sucks. That’s kind of the point of the exercise. In this kind of quick-moving scenario, harm reduction is the name of the game.

Yes, the ideal solution is to untie the people from the tracks, do everything you can to stop anyone who is tying people to the tracks, or even building more trolley rails so that you’ll have more choices.

That’s where we fall down. Time after time after time. We wring our hands as the trolley hurtles down the track. We agonize over the choices, argue whether or not it’s moral or "right" to flip the trolley to where it causes less harm.

Once the terrible choice is past, we don’t do a damn thing about it until it’s happening again. Not from the general public — who are already hoping that things "just get normal again" — and not even from the most strident complainers.

And maybe that’s the real lesson of the trolley problem: we argue over that one pull of the switch, and put forth the effort to stop others from tying people to the tracks.

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{1} Yes, voting is harm reduction, but it is not enough.

Featured Photo by Jack Patrick on Unsplash