The Trolley Problem

One Death or Five

A runaway trolley speeds toward five workers. You can pull a lever to divert it onto a side track, where it kills one. Most people pull it. Five deaths beat one. Now change the setup: you stand on a footbridge beside a large stranger. Shoving him onto the tracks would stop the trolley and save five. The math is identical, yet most people refuse. Why does killing feel different from letting die, and pushing worse than diverting?

“He is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other.”

Where this sits in the course

“The Trolley Problem” is lesson 4 of 5 in How Should We Act?, a course about turn from what is true to what should be done.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.

How Should We Act? is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.

In the app this lesson is followed by 5 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.