Would You Sacrifice One Person to Save Five? (The Trolley Problem)

 A few years ago, I was introduced to the "Trolley Problem" by a neat Ted-Ed video. (neal.fun has a really good version of this as well on his website). 

It's a fun thought experiment that weighs the value of human lives. 

So here's how the original Trolley Problem typically goes:

Imagine you have a speeding train barreling down a track, heading towards five strangers, all tied to the track (in some versions this five people are loud construction train workers unable to hear the train coming). 

You can't stop the train in time, but lucky for you, the track diverges into a fork onto another smaller track, AWAY from the five, but will kill ONE person stuck on the other track. 

So the question essentially becomes-

Will you kill ONE person, in order to save FIVE? 

Now of course, five lives technically "outweigh" one, but is PURPOSELY causing the death of a person morally wrong in and of itself? 

Could the most moral action be not to do anything?

To find the answer to this moral dilemma, I asked a member of First Priority to get-

A Fellow Christian's Perspective:

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a devout member (who we'll call Tim) of Cypress Bay's First Priority club during lunchtime. (First Priority is basically Jesus club, where fellow Christians invite others and gather in the 8th building every Monday.)

I wanted to hear how a Christian would find his way around this moral dilemma. Would they allow for the "collective good?" Or would they say otherwise?

Now, from a Biblical perspective, murder is an "absolute evil," similar to how Christians perceive denouncing their faith. So in this context, DELIBERATELY causing the death of another human being would be morally wrong in EVERY scenario.

As expected, Tim said he would never divert the track to kill the one man. "Murder is an absolute evil," he repeated, "in any way, shape, or form." But I wanted to see if I could take this further.

So I said to him, let's say we have a starving village in remote Africa with 5000 men, women, and children.

Inside the village, there's an extremely fat man that keeps eating all the corn and wheat, there's simply no way to deliver food to the village (for the sake of this thought experiment). 

EVERY single villager is pleading and begging with you to shoot this parasitic worm dead (as you are the only one able to afford a gun), so that they'll have more food to eat. 

Would you sacrifice one? To save not just 5 (as would be in the original Trolley Problem), not just 50, not just 500, but 5000 innocent villagers. 

Besides, if you shoot the poor man in the back of the neck (like in Of Mice and Men), it won't even hurt at all. This man is evil beyond belief, compared to the sinless villagers in this poor remote settlement.

I asked Tim what he'd do in this exact scenario, and as expected (or perhaps expected), he said he would STILL let the murderer off the hook, despite his heinous crimes.

Going by the same philosophy of murder being an absolute evil, the action of saving the village at the cost of a death would STILL be unjustifiable. 

But even as someone who tends towards Christian beliefs myself, I just couldn't find myself leaning towards this way of thinking. I mean, this was literal insanity! How could it not be? 

And would this apply to other "sins" as well, like lying or stealing? Aren't those "absolute evils" as well? There had to be some other way of philosophy to sort this out.

So for us (and this thought experiment), let's look at-

The Utilitarian Perspective:

Now utilitarianism revolves around the idea of the greatest NET benefit for the people as a whole. If a utilitarianist won the Powerball jackpot, they'd donate all of that money to charity and other strangers, for the "greatest benefit" to all, despite him not receiving any of it. 

Utilitarianism makes sense on paper, and it seems like a potential candidate for an absolute moral code.

But dig a little deeper, and you see utilitarianism as the moral philosophy it REALLY is: a house a cards that topples over with just a little push.

Let's go back to the Trolley problem, shall we? Now of course, a utilitarian perspective would be to save the 5 instead of 1, which mostly makes sense in this scenario. 5 lives are "worth" more than one. 

The Doctor Dilemma 

Let's say we have a perfectly rational doctor, always choosing the best outcome in every situation. One morning, after his morning coffee and commute to the work hospital, he walks into his office only to find five patients in the emergency room on the brink of death. 

Patient 1 needs a new kidney, as does Patient 2. Patient 3 needs a new liver, and Patient 4 needs a new lung. And most dire of all, Patient 5 needs a new heart. 

Mr. Doctor here is about to let them pass away peacefully, knowing that the hospital has run out of organs to donate, and that new ones will be too expensive for any of the patients' insurance to afford. 

But then- he remembers something. His annoying next-door neighbor Penny happens to be the perfect match for all five patients, and there's enough time to donate all of her organs. The only problem? She'll be dead if we donate all her precious organs.

So what should the Good Doctor do in this case? After all, its five vs one. From a utilitarianism perspective, the outcome is EXACTLY the same. But something just feels off about this. Directly murdering poor, poor Penny just seems brutally different, for reasons that are hard to explain.

My Thoughts on the Trolley Problem:

In the original trolley problem, most people including me would probably pull the lever. But when it comes to thought experiments like with the Mad Doctor and his five suffering patients, there seems to be something more INTENTIONAL about those deaths. 

When the one man dies in the original Trolley Problem, it's much more like collateral damage in comparison, a necessary sacrifice to save five innocents. But purposely murdering someone with your own hands is on a whole different level, and for reasons that are hard to truly articulate. 

So in my own personal viewpoint, I think a "Limited Utilitarianist" perspective makes sense in most scenarios. That is, seeking the best outcome of everyone, but still using common sense. 

Now what is "common sense?" There's no real way to define it, except for making the choice that just "makes sense."

And that's what so unique about these moral dilemmas, especially for those of us who believe in absolute morality. Sometimes, there's no way to really explain why one choice is correct, vs another, even if the amount of lives gained or lost is the exact same. 

The good news is that we'll probably never see any dilemma like this in our lives, either because it will never happen, or that we'll just be distracted in the anxious heat of the moment. 

So to answer the original question in the title, saving 5 vs 1, about 90% of people (in a controlled study) would pull the lever. Are you one of them?