“Do what is right and not what is easy”. In a civilization where the bridge between right and wrong has been rapidly narrowing down, the diversification of opinions had led to an ethical conundrum.

One of the most famous and complicated demonstrations of this phenomenon is the trolley problem. For those who aren’t familiar with the topic, the most basic example or common situation to understand this thought-provoking experiment is as follows.

You spot a moving trolley approaching a group of five people tied and lying on the tracks, simply unaware of the impending danger moving towards them. Your position is close to a lever that controls the switch. If you pull the switch the trolley gets redirected to a different track where an innocent man is present. In a similar situation, you could have called out to the five people or shouted at them to warn them off, however that defeats the whole purpose of imagining this morally questionable situation. The question here lies how far you are ready to challenge your ethics to protect innocent lives. You could argue that you aren’t in any way responsible for the occurrence of this condition, but that’s what this whole topic is about, not taking the easy walk out.

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A similar example suggests that a judge or magistrate is faced with the dangerous claims of a number of rioters to solve a particular criminal case or they shall take the law in their hands and perform their own revenge through fire or blood on a particular section of the community. The real culprit is unknown, and the judge is out of time. The only solution is to frame an innocent and make him the sacrificial lamb by executing him. This is a breach of the human rights of the individual, but should it be considered illegal and unjust if it helps save a mass of more?

Research and survey have discovered that most people would opt to sacrifice one innocent man over five or more, even if it is out of guilt and hesitation but is that the right decision to make? Is quantity always prioritized in an ethically questionable situation? To answer this question we have a few more examples that prove that mass welfare is not always and the only deciding factor.

Consider or imagine a similar situation like the basic trolley problem where your position has been changed to the bridge from where you can view the scene and beside you, there is a fat man. The fat man has a weight and mass eligible enough to stop the trolley, provided you push him off the bridge, killing him in the process to save five. However, does he deserve it? Unlike the previous trolley problem, you could be tried for murder even if your intention was to save five because according to law killing one innocent unaware man to save five is insufficient justification. In this condition, there isn’t a singular victim but two, including you.

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Further modifying the example what if the fat man was the one responsible for the condition of the five men tied and lying on the tracks. In that case, pushing him off the bridge to save the rest must seem fitting.

An alternative case by Judith Jarvis Thompson brings to light a more relatable real-life problem. Here we have a transplant surgeon who has five patients, each in need of a different organ without which they wouldn’t survive. Unfortunately, the hospital has no organs to perform the operation. A young healthy man who was newly admitted in the hospital for a regular checkup was a compatible match for the other five patients. Do you think for a man whose sole responsibility is to save lives, it is ethically correct to murder an innocent to protect five others?

This is a very common condition in everyday medical life with a change in a few factors. I recently came across an article on social media where the circumstances might have been a little different but they reminded me of this same problem. A man had been declared brain dead after an accident and his father gave an affirmation for an organ donation for four hopeful patients who otherwise wouldn’t survive without them. However, the case took a surprising turn and it was discovered that the man was in this condition due to an attempt to murder and not an accident. This procedure required an autopsy which would prevent the other patients from receiving their promised organs. So in an emotion-evoking condition like this if you were the father, would you still permit the doctors to go on with the organ donation or seek justice for your only son by allowing the autopsy?

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There are too many questions and factors to contemplate and refer to when you solve any trolley problem. In philosophical terms, the trolley problem is consequential; here we do not deal with the solution to the problem, but the consequences that are created by that solution. Morality is defined by these consequences. For better understanding let us refer to another problem.

In order to save five men from a trolley you push another trolley towards it, on collision, they fall down from the hill into the yard of an innocent man who gets killed in the process. The difference in this problem is that here you have no idea about a third person involvement before you take a decision. It must have seemed ethically correct when it was practised, irrespective of the consequences a question of morality cannot be maintained in this problem.

These days the trolley problem is being experimented for decision making on autonomous vehicles keeping in mind various factors in complicated setups. For example, if a driverless car has to choose between a speeding sports car that has broken several traffic rules, with five people among which the front row passengers are not wearing a seat belt and a perfectly law-abiding citizen on a bike with a helmet on, should the car rely on quantity or innocence.

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A survey is done for these problems and ethical settings are preset as inbuilt data. However, it is still questionable if the preferences should be preset or decided by the user.

So the moral of the story is that there is no definite solution to the trolley problem. You can never truly be morally correct or morally incorrect when it comes to defining a solution for a trolley problem. It was introduced to evoke thought and test the psychological limits of a person when facing a similar situation. There is no best answer to an ethical dilemma. However, in time we hope that history of similar problems, philosophy of the mind and science can be our moral guide to a better solution with public interest and welfare in mind.