Having posted lots in this thread about excellent reasons not to answer the question, I shall now pretend to be one of the students that frustrates Desrtopa so and answer. Thus cutting myself off from becoming Prime Minister, but oh well.
The key to the problem is: I don’t actually know or care about any of these people. So the question is answered in terms of the consequences (legal and social) to me, not to them.
e.g. in real life, action with a negative consequence tends to attract greater penalties than lack of action. So pushing one in front to save five is right out. Actively switching to kill one instead of leaving the switch to five, that one would be tricky—I might feel it was a less bad response and hence do it, despite possible penalties for having dared take an action instead of just floundering. (There, an actual answer.)
If I actually know and like any of these people, the problem gets more complicated. If all the friends are on one branch, they win, everyone else loses. If there’s options of which friends I kill (and that phrase popped into my head as “which friends I kill” rather than “which friends die”—I seem not to be shirking responsibility), then I have some tricky calculation to do.
Whatever happens, I do expect I would be extremely upset and not fully functional for a little while afterwards.
There. Is that enough not to fall at the first hurdle in Philosophy 100?
Having posted lots in this thread about excellent reasons not to answer the question, I shall now pretend to be one of the students that frustrates Desrtopa so and answer. Thus cutting myself off from becoming Prime Minister, but oh well.
The key to the problem is: I don’t actually know or care about any of these people. So the question is answered in terms of the consequences (legal and social) to me, not to them.
e.g. in real life, action with a negative consequence tends to attract greater penalties than lack of action. So pushing one in front to save five is right out. Actively switching to kill one instead of leaving the switch to five, that one would be tricky—I might feel it was a less bad response and hence do it, despite possible penalties for having dared take an action instead of just floundering. (There, an actual answer.)
If I actually know and like any of these people, the problem gets more complicated. If all the friends are on one branch, they win, everyone else loses. If there’s options of which friends I kill (and that phrase popped into my head as “which friends I kill” rather than “which friends die”—I seem not to be shirking responsibility), then I have some tricky calculation to do.
Whatever happens, I do expect I would be extremely upset and not fully functional for a little while afterwards.
There. Is that enough not to fall at the first hurdle in Philosophy 100?