Why Trolley Problems Are the Least Interesting Ethical Dilemma

(And some more challenging ones)

Photo by POR7O on Unsplash

Scroll down for the alternative dilemmas

Today we are talking Trolley Problems, only we’re not, because I am sick of them and they’re boring. Trolley Problems are basically, you’re a train driver, your train is about to kill five kids, do you divert it so it kills a rail worker instead. Since it’s obviously better to for one person to die than five, the question is around whether you can actually make that decision when it involves pulling the trigger yourself.

But they really jumped the shark and now it’s all “is it better to kill one doctor or five kids, since that doctor might save more than five kids’ lives in his career?” and “is it better to kill a loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules, or a world-weary detective who’s three days from retirement?” It’s just nonsense at this point.

The problem:

1. It tends to stay way too hypothetical because most of us never encounter a situation where we have to choose which person to kill. When it feels abstract, you don’t really feel the difficulty of the decision. Stuff like “should you tell someone if you find out their partner is cheating on them” feels thornier because it’s closer to home and the stakes are lower. On that note -