Has someone done the joke yet, where you can post one trolley problem meme or five trolley problem memes, no other choice!
Assuming we know nothing about the other dudes, their chance of picking switch is n for each of them. If I pick stay, the death count is 5. If I pick switch, the following happens: If the first picks stay (1-n chance), the death count is 6. If the first picks switch (n), 7 deaths with (n-n^2 ). If the second picks switch, 8 deaths with (n^2-n^3), otherwise 3 deaths with (n^3).
6 * (1-n) = 6-6n
7 * (n-n^2) = 7n - 7n^2
8 * (n^2-n^3) = 8n^2 - 8n^3
3 * (n^3) = 3n^3
The total death toll is 6+n+n^2-5n^3 for switch, 5 for stay. When n is less than approximately 0.8, you should stay.
In surveys around 90% of regular people say they would switch, suggesting you should switch, but experiments trying to make the setup more realistic reduced the switching probability. Of philosophers around 68% would switch, suggesting that philosophers are evil and should be the ones tied to the tracks, but if that’s not happening you should probably stay if you’re playing against philosophers. All in all the empirical evidence suggests you should probably stay, because in addition to the deaths you cause a lot of psychological distress to other people if you switch and all it takes is for one of them to stay to ruin everything.
2 weeks ago · tagged #death cw #trolleys cw #promethea brand overthinking · 7,757 notes · source: memewhore · .permalink