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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 3252515" data-attributes="member: 3424">Sometimes, it's how you present the issue. There is a classic question involving a runaway train which places you at the railroad switch. If you do nothing, the train will kill five men who happen to be working on the track. If you do switch tracks, the train will kill one man who is working on the other track. Standard disclaimers apply: you do not have time to warn any of the men, you have no way to stop the train, etc.In a variant of this problem, you are on a bridge above the railway track where five men are working, next to a very fat man. If you push the fat man off the bridge, his mass is enough to stop the train and save the other five men. You yourself are not heavy enough, there is no way for you to warn the other five men, etc.In both these cases, there is a similar trade-off: one man dies, or five men die. Yet, pushing the fat man off the bridge seems less moral than switching the track.Minor tangent, if you were a time traveller, and it was the Evil Leader working on the other track (this was before he went into politics), would you switch tracks to save the five men? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 3252515, member: 3424"] Sometimes, it's how you present the issue. There is a classic question involving a runaway train which places you at the railroad switch. If you do nothing, the train will kill five men who happen to be working on the track. If you do switch tracks, the train will kill one man who is working on the other track. Standard disclaimers apply: you do not have time to warn any of the men, you have no way to stop the train, etc. In a variant of this problem, you are on a bridge above the railway track where five men are working, next to a very fat man. If you push the fat man off the bridge, his mass is enough to stop the train and save the other five men. You yourself are not heavy enough, there is no way for you to warn the other five men, etc. In both these cases, there is a similar trade-off: one man dies, or five men die. Yet, pushing the fat man off the bridge seems less moral than switching the track. Minor tangent, if you were a time traveller, and it was the Evil Leader working on the other track (this was before he went into politics), would you switch tracks to save the five men? :p [/QUOTE]

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