"Trolley problem". What choice would you make if you had to save lives?
Briefly, the essence of the situation is described in Wikipedia: "A heavy unguided trolley is rushing along the rails. On its way there are five people tied to the rails by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can switch the arrow, and then the trolley will go on a different, siding. Unfortunately, there is one person on the siding, also tied to the tracks. What are your actions?".What would you do in this situation? And how would you justify your choice?
Here, before you answer, you need to explain your position. I believe that killing a person, even for the sake of living more lives, is not ethical, for the simple reason that each of you contains two good lungs, two excellent kidneys, a lot of bone marrow and other offal, and all this is vital for terminally ill people to transplant. But is it ethical to kill one healthy person in order to distribute his organs even to ten sick people, even knowing that they will all survive and the organs will take root perfectly and there will be no rejection and other things. Would it be ethical to hunt healthy people with the slogan: we save more people!
So I wouldn't switch anything
For those who do not know, the trolley problem has no solution, it was not created to solve it, it was created to complicate utilitarians, clearly demonstrating that there is no one ideal solution to moral and ethical problems.
Again, if you slightly change the conditions of the task, for example: a terrorist is hiding behind a hostage, and shoots at civilians, is it worth killing a hostage in order to kill the terrorist at the same time? In my opinion, it is worth it. This is quite a legitimate version of the” trolley problem”, but my solution here, as you can see, is different, and I can't even really explain why I agree to murder in one case and not in the other.
Well, a bunch of options with the problem itself, that is, without even changing the conditions (as in the case of a terrorist), but adding variables to it. That is, for example, I know that there is a villain (a murderer or a pedophile) on the siding-yes, I switch it, I save the innocent. If we know that after we switch the track, the trolley can fly off and injure an indefinite number of other people (that is, maybe dozens, maybe no one at all) – no, I don't switch. Yes, even the banal increase in the number of saved people already makes you change your mind.
Moreover, in most cases I can hardly argue my position. Yes, at least in the last one, why can I sacrifice five based on the arguments expressed in the first paragraph, and the death of more people already seems unacceptable to me?
Somehow it turns out like this. This is not to mention the fact that how you will behave in a real emergency, you will find out only after being in this emergency. And then the third option will be added here: from overwhelming feelings and responsibility, put a bullet in your forehead)))