I am confused as to why anyone would not flip the switch? Flipping the switch seems to have somewhere between a 10% and 100% chance of saving your life, and not flipping the switch seems to guarantee death?
Is there some kind of penalty to flipping the switch that I am missing?
Or is the drawing misleading, and in Scenario B, there is also supposed to be a person drawn on the other track?
Thank you! <3 My guess is that no to the first, since I have a 1/3 chance of being in the forked path, vs 1/15 of being in the straight path and my lever being connected. However, in the second situation I would flip it, since I’d only kill 1/3 of all people (myself every time), versus 2/3 (myself included) if I don’t flip it.
My guess is that no to the first, since I have a 1/3 chance of being in the forked path, vs 1/15 of being in the straight path and my lever being connected.
Suppose you live in a kingdom where everyone is as selfish as you, and you’ve seen on TV many situations exactly like this one where people were tied to the tracks - usually one at a time and occasionally 10 at a time. (The villain has been prolific.) You’ve seen them all follow this logic and choose not to flip their switch, yet out of ~1500 people you have seen in peril this way, ~1000 of them have died. If only their logic had convinced them (and you) otherwise, 1000 of them could have selfishly survived! Doesn’t seem very logical to follow a course of action that kills you more often than its opposite.
(If you don’t want to imagine a kingdom where everyone is selfish, you can imagine one where x% are selfish and (100-x)% are altruistic, or some other mixture maybe with y% of people who flip the lever randomly back and forth and z% who cannot even understand the question. The point is that the paradox still exists.)
Edit: I can see now how in a 100% altruistic kingdom, where you are the only selfish one and you know for sure that everyone else will logically altruistically pull the lever, it makes sense for you to not pull the lever. Presumably there is some population x% split (44% selfish/56% altruistic?) where your selfish decision will have to reverse. Weird to think that your estimate of the selfishness of the rest of the population has a relevance on your decision!
It’s a really cool puzzle, nice job! The solution being a huge prisoner’s dilemma makes it all the more interesting and deep. I guess an iterated version resulting in collaboration would be difficult in this particular case, though ;)
You are on the side track in scenario A. You die if you pull. Ironically, you’d be killing yourself. The dice are to make the two scenarios not equally likely.
there’s no way to know which track the trolley is on
It’s a standard trolley meme problem, the trolley will keep going on the main track unless the lever is switched 😁. I thought !science_memes would be familiar with trolley problems, but I guess I get to introduce some of you! You might want to start off on some easier trolley memes first, this is advanced level stuff.
where the real lever sends it
There is not usually ambiguity with the lever. If you wish, you can have an announcement in the headphones “main track… side track…” every time you flip the lever. Your only uncertainty is which track you yourself are bound to, given how you’re blindfolded.
There’s a 5/6 chance someone is put onto the side rail (the one the trolley won’t go down without interfering with it)
There’s a 1/6 chance someone is put onto the main rail (the one the trolley WILL go down)
You’re more likely to be on the side track if you’re involved in this scenario, so if you wanna get hit you SHOULD try to flip it (if you’re the one on the side track, it guarantees a hit. If you’re one of the 10 people on the main, you have a 90% chance of having a dead switch and should try anyway)
Unless being tired at work is making me miss something
There’s a 1/6 chance that scenario B happens, but that scenario involves 10 people, and the only thing you know is that you are one person strapped to the rail, so the chance that you are strapped to the main rail is P(main) = P(B|abducted) = P(abducted|B) * P(B) / P(abducted) = 10 * P(abducted|A) * 1/6 / P(abducted).
We can do the same for P(side) = P(A|abducted) = P(abducted|A) * P(A) / P(abducted) = P(abducted|A) * 5/6 / P(abducted). Then, P(main) / P(side) = 10 * 1/6 / 5/6 = 2. Since P(main) + P(side) = 1, then P(main) = 2/3 and P(side) = 1/3.
No, your math is wrong. The chance you’re on the main track is actually twice as high. Imagine it like this: When all numbers 1-6 would come up once, there have been 10 people overall on the main track and only 5 people on the side track
But 9 of those people can’t affect the outcome either way. So the chance that you’re on the main track and can affect the outcome in a positive way by flipping the switch is only 1/15.
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