assassin_aragorn ,

I've seen two interesting spins on the trolley problem recently.

  1. "Just blow up the trolley." This is actually a very apt description of accelerationism. Blowing up the trolley doesn't stop the forward momentum -- it just turns the trolley barrelling towards the trapped people into a fiery wreckage barreling towards the trapped people. Plus if there's people on the trolley... Yeah.

  2. "Untie the trapped people while other people push back and stop the trolley". This is once again rather emblematic, this time of blind idealism. The idea that if we get enough people, then we can stop the trolley,
    sounds good on paper and makes you feel nice. But it ignores the reality that people cannot hold back a trolley like that. It just isn't possible for the necessary number of people to simultaneously push back against it.

Not to mention, the whole point of the trolley problem is that the trolley is a metaphor for an unstoppable event that is impossible to avoid. It's nice to think we could dismantle it, but we can't.

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