• 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    A trolley barrels towards a bunch of construction workers stuck on the tracks.

    • If you pull the first lever it will divert and only kill one person.
    • If you don’t pull the first lever it will kill 100 people, including that one person from before - he’s standing before the track change.
    • But, and now this is key, there is a second lever to the right of the first that says “Display lever only, does nothing.” It does nothing.


    What do you do?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      10 hours ago

      You blame someone else. It’s definitely not your fault, it definitely cannot be that.

    • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      I said throw shit onto the track to try and stop the trolley once.

      The philosophy majors did not like me pointing out it was ridiculous to imagine the problem existing in a void with an absolute limit on possible courses of action.

      They liked it even less when I reminded them that the problem was invented to make fun of them by a philosopher who was arguing that both courses of action were ridiculous conclusions to reach given the broader context of a trolley crash not existing in a vacuum.

      Thought experiments in the void is how we got the declaration that feathers and lead weights were affected by different rates of gravity.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Cool, so if you dont vote for Harris, you’re wasting your vote.

        I also think philosophy is mostly dumb. But there is a vacuum here, shitty democracy or fascism. You can throw shit on the tracks, that just means one less vote against fascism

        • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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          6 hours ago

          I was talking about the philosophy problem itself not the FPTP vote. As you could probably guess from the context of me dunking on the philosophy majors so much.