Dan Coleman
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

I like your variant where the subject is sufficiently hefty to stop the train, and has the choice of suicide or homicide to save 5 lives. It does indeed sharpen the moral and ethical dilemma. But you’ve missed another potentially illuminating shift of perspective.

Invoking the platinum rule makes me think of this variant: You and your spouse and your 3 children are tied to the tracks. What would you like the 2 fat people on the bridge to do unto you? I think the only honest answer is that you don’t give a flying frack which fat person takes the plunge, nor whether they jumped or were pushed, as long as you and your family are saved. To me, this reduces the original problem to a triviality. Even if it was just you, or just one of your kids tied to the track, the answer is the same (let’s leave the spouse out of it: love is strange). Anyone who claims they would rather die than live knowing a stranger was killed instead is simply self-deluded.

Frankly, what begins to make it interesting is if your life is not at stake. What if it’s only your arms and legs? Just the legs? Just one arm? One pinky? Can you really honestly answer that you’d rather live your life limbless than walk the earth knowing you owe your limbs to a brave and foolish stranger?

Maybe Mel Brooks summed it up best: “Tragedy is when I have a hangnail, Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die.”

    Dan Coleman

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