Easy, kill the first person.
You didn’t kill that person, the person who invented the problem did.
Philosophy is easy.
After person 33 there won’t be any more humans to tie to the rails
Edit: which was pointed more subtly by OP in the title
So if you the 32, you choice is to kill hall of the humanity, or be killed by the next person Why does it feel like this is his is the choice we all have ?
no, this means you already saved half. unless someone was untying the people from previous track then re-tie them again to be killed?
Maybe it’s a loop?
As long as everyone doubles there will be no deaths.
Why do I get the feeling this kind of logic is used by modern day economists to justify inflation?
When we are all strapped to the tracks, who will decide?
How fast is the train going can I make it to the person who’s tied down and lay with them
232 is roughly four billion. We’ll need one or two more doublings to get every last person alive on the tracks.
This introduces a new wrinkle in the experiment: all the switch operators are also tied to the track. Somewhere.
Just a little more and every single particle in the universe will be on the tracks, and what the fuck would happen if every particle in the universe was split in twain? Let’s assume it radiated outward from the center of the universe at the speed of light…
so umm if it was every particle, what would be hitting it?
Don’t say my mom.My god, we’ve figured it out.
Honestly I would. Like I wouldn’t hesitate to kill patient zero of a world ending disease.
But then it isn’t a world ending desease, you just killed somebody
The use of a time machine is implied in these situations
Kill the person who invented the trolley problem. It’s the only way to be sure
If you killed patient 0, then it wasn’t a world ending disease either.
The logic that nobody would ever die as long as nobody ever pulls falls through when you realize after 33 cycles you’re risking the entire human population on the whims of a stranger and that irrational actors will always exist.
It becomes not if but when.
Maybe a world ending disease is the cure… just looking around.
This guy is the perfect example of why we cannot trust somebody won’t pull the lever.
Youre right but for the wrong reason. Id pull it thinking it was going one way and it would go the other.
Do you know any of the people involved?
at the 33rd round you do
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Finally a life without shame.
Not quite. Round 33 will have 2^32 people, or a bit over half the population of Earth. Remember, round 1 has one person, 2^(0), not 2^(1).
How many rounds until the first switch operator is on the tracks?
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If you are number 32 the chance is 50/50
How do you know blahblahblah only knows one person? Are you that one person?
50/50
What’s wrong with you, don’t you know 4 billion people
Just keep doubling until max_int and segfault reality
Do i get to choose the person i kill?
And how I kill them?
easy there killer
I’d get it done and over with. I would resent myself forever, and accept any punishment for it, but it’s better than waiting to see if someone wants to decide to kill off half the world later on. Would be even easier if I could take the first persons spot on the tracks so there only has to be one messed up person rather than two.
In recognition of your heroic sacrifice, I volunteer to pull the switch to send the train to run over you.
Schrödingers murder: You are both a murder and not a murder. You are not a murderer as you did not choose to kill a person, but as this can not continue forever you are also a murderer since it is quite certain that eventually someone will choose murder.
Can you murder through innaction? By not pulling the lever, you haven’t changed the system.
Yes. You can. If you are responsible for pulling a lever to stop people from dying, and you don’t, that sounds very murdery to me
Legally speaking, I think the only legally correct (very much not morally) correct thing to do is absolutely nothing whatsoever.
You might be required to call the authorities, but given that either option in theory may eventually lead to the loss of life I think you’d be most safe legally, if you didn’t touch a damn thing.
if the choice is always the same and it goes forever, then always choosing to pass means no one gets killed? unless you get to a little shit who breaks the trend
Yes. But it keeps going forever, and eventually some chaotic-evil person will kill choose to kill 2^43 people, which is a thousand times the world’s population.
Sounds like what we have been doing with the environment.
Maybe there is nobody tied up after the third split, nobody explicitly stated it continues!
You try to save them all by tackling the guy on the second track. The train is 400m from the wye in the track but 375m from the point the second person can decide to flip the switch. You are 270m from the second person. The train travels at a steady 15m/s. You start running at an acceleration of 0.5m/s/s. Can you tackle the second person to prevent them from flipping the switch? Assume flipping the switch means killing the poor tied up folks.
I dunno. I just made up numbers though.
I assume if they DON’T flip it, it gets passed yo the next guy with 4 people tied to the track.
33junctions down the road, and it’s the population of the earth tied down.
Yes but that is literally the opposite of the premise I presented. That’s how it’s normally seen, but this is just fun and dumb high school physics question. K thx bai
You try to save them all by tackling the guy on the second track
Or ask the train driver to stop
