Kill 1 person. I feel it would be cowardly to pass the buck and risk killing 2.
Lest they do the same and kill 4, etc.
But what happens when you get to, say, the 34th person, and there are 2^33 people tied up, more than there are living humans in the world? Pass the buck, break the simulation, save the world
I've never been much of a gambler. I'll stick with my one kill.
Can I move the rails to kill them all and then circle around and hit me?
Easy. I'd just step in front of the train.
this is not a purely theoretical question. in practice, autonomous vehicles face exactly this dilemma. or rather the manufacturers of the vehicles who have to set the specifications
I forget where it was from but years ago I found an online survey on autonomous cars and their decision making from a university. It was all about deciding to swerve or not in a collision. All kinds of difficult encounters like do you hit the barrier and kill the passenger or swerve and kill the old lady? Do you hit thin person or serve and hit the heavier person?
I've never seen a survey drill down into biases quite so deeply.
Easy. Prioritize who is saved based on social credit score.
From what I've seen of real world examples, not "what if the car had 5 cats in it and the person on the crosswalk had a stroller full of 6 cat, swerve into a barricade?", telsa cars just release control of the autonomous controls to the person behind the wheel a few seconds before impact so the driver is fully liable.
So how does that killing thing work, doing it by yourself or just thinking and the person dies?
I think with this scenario it's indirectly caused by you. Either you 'press a button,' directly resulting in the death of a specific individual, or another person is given the same scenario but the button directly causes double the number of deaths if they press it.
As the famous Double Down Domino would say, "I'm doublin' down!"
I'd try to talk to the person on the track to see if they were an asshole and decide from there.
I think everyone here is missing the real answer. If you look at the picture you will notice a third option, there are track switches, two of them, you can bypass the people tied to the track, then kill the monster forcing you to kill for no reason.
