Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 22, 2020

Second question: does the guy on the other track owe me money? Because, I don’t want to kill him before I’m paid back.

As I recall, you can either save 5 strangers or 1 person you know.

Ha! Judith Jarvis Thomson’s trolley problem makes it into the comics.

Question: who are the five tied to the railroad track. If the five are politicians, those five can start a filibuster that could bring a freight train to a screeching stop with room to spare.

I love how Rat makes it so plausible that everything is about him.

You lost him at “ethics.”

Reminds me of this safety quiz in READER’S DIGEST. You’re driving along at night and you see a car with a lot of people stalled at a level crossing, with the light of an approaching train. What. Do. You. Do?

The answer they gave was: Get the people out of the car and away from the tracks. Forget about trying to push the car—it’s hard to estimate the distance of an approaching train and it may be too dangerous.

Here’s my answer: Turn around and drive away. If you can’t risk pushing the car, you have nothing to contribute to the situation. Surely they can get out of the car by themselves!

Here’s one for “prolifers”:

You’re picketing in an in vitro clinic.

A fire breaks out and everyone runs for the exits, except you and a frightened five year old.

Do you save him, or the 20,000 babies in the freezer?

If the one guy is just standing on the track instead of being tied down, yell, “GET THE HELL OFF THE TRACK!” and flip the switch.

The resulting derailment will likely kill them all plus many on the train, ethics be damned.

If you don’t like answers you shouldn’t ask questions.

If it’s AMTRAK, it’ll be way late.

If he’s a philosopher-king, he gets a pass! :-)

No Ethics here . That is double headed coin set-up ! … Croc Power !

Rat has a one-track mind!

Ask yourself. Do these people wish to be saved? Why are they here? Why are they tied up? Oops, too late.

Flip the switch, free the people, then all 6 of you go beat up the guy that thought up this stupid question.

Another track? Not the “other” only? Easy peasy, switch to a 3rd. track!

Who ties people to a railroad track these days? Is the culprit Snidely Whiplash?

Watch “The Good Life” for the answer(s).

Is there any way to have the train run down both tracks?

sounds like a job for superman…but then what about the owners of the train and the lost wages of undelivered freight?

One purpose of these trolley problems is not just to come up with the right answer, but to observe yourself and how you think while trying to come up with the right answer.

In the first version of the trolley problem that I read, your choice was whether or not to slow the trolley and save the passengers by pushing a 600 pound man on to the tracks in front of them. Throwing yourself wasn’t an option, since you were assumed to be lighter. How you would push someone that heavy if he didn’t want to be pushed wasn’t explained.

That’s a no brainer. Switch the track to save the 5 that are tied to the track. If the person standing on the other track is killed it’s because he/she was too stupid to move. Natural selection solved the problem. Hopefully before that person passed on their stupid genes.

This is a really interesting question that programers of autonomous vehicles are currently struggling to answer. Check this out: https://www.insidescience.org/news/moral-dilemmas-self-driving-cars

Yes, since the guy is standing, what you do is flip the switch and yell at the guy to get out of the track.

However, in the real world, the need for info would be important. Here are some criteria that would influence the decision, as we can see daily:

Are these 5 people on the same political side as mine?

Is their religion the same as mine?

Do they eat or refuse to eat the same things as I do?

Is their skin color the same as mine?

Do they have the same sexual orientations as mine?

Are they insured and is there money to make from their death?

Or money to make from suing the rail company after the catastrophe?

Would them being run over by the train make a source of crude oil available?

Would their being run over by a train divert the media attention away from me?

Would I be able to blame someone else for their death and take advantage of it?

O M G ….RAT is annoying….

As I did not tie them to the tracks nor did I direct the man to stand on the other set of tracks I’d likely do nothing and thereby avoid culpability in any deaths.

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”—Mr. Spock

It actually says more about the person who came up with the question then it does about how it gets answered.

I don’t care what the rest of you do, I’m going for a beer!

What would I DO??? Sell tickets to the upcoming spectacle of the train wreck!

today it seems Rat and I are cut from the same cloth.

Is The other guy Trump?

So, is the guy on the track supposed to be a billionaire?

No the answer is NO, save them all .

Use your mobile app to phone the engineer and tell him/her to stop the train.

I find Rat’s rationality scary most of the time yet strangely appealing….

What’s the guy doing on the railroad tracks? What a jerk. He deserves to get run over. ;)

If the five on the track are Drumpf,McConnell,Pompeo,Miller,And Barr.Let it do it’s best not to derail ;~|

Quick, take out 5 accidental death insurance policies and don’t do anything else. Problem solved and at a profit.

Dumba$$ deserves it for standing on a track while a train is coming. Maybe he’s standing there on purpose…

Earth’s population has tripled since I was born. Yell at the standing guy to move to the other track, then DO NOT throw the switch.

Does anybody here know what a railroad switch looks like, where it’s found, or how to operate it?

Rat’s question was like the one version of the Trolly Problems that The Good Place didn’t cover I think

Imagine a world without hypothetical questions.

Nowadays, there’s so much hardpack gravel between ties and under tracks, bring a trowel. Just sayin.

Followup: Any of the five people cute single women who may be grateful for saving their lives?

Is there a train coming in the opposite direction on the other track?

Spock’s answer. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

How about I yell at the dummy standing on the tracks to move his stupid butt out of the way and flip the switch?My teacher always hated seeing my hand go up when he asked these kinds of questions. :^)

Nobody brought up the fact that if the single person is a lawyer, you are ethically obligated to pull the lever.

Since the other guy is standing on the tracks, he should be able to get out of the way of the train. Throw the switch.

No matter who dies, it’s Trump’s fault.

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan question right there. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” “Or the one.” Though in this case do the needs of the many truely outweigh the needs of the one when the one is not the person to be rescueing the many?

Very poorly phrased ethics question. Obviously the idea behind the ethics question is do you allow five people to die through inaction or kill one person by direct action? People here are making a big deal out of the fact that the other guy isn’t tied down. Maybe it should be changed from “guy standing on the tracks” to “guy laying unconscious on the tracks”.

Who cares? These are all merely hypothetical victims, anyway. In the Real World, it is extremely unlikely such a situation would ever arise….

This can be accomplished by multi-track drifting!

This sounds like a math question from school days.

What disgusting answers! How could you all of you be so callous? But, I agree. Wait until he has paid you back…

I would flip the switch, then push the other guy out of the way.

Yell at the other guy to get of the tracks

I’ve heard one like this: Imagine that you’re driving a bus with cliffs on both eyes. There’s a man stuck to the middle of the road. Do you keep driving and kill him, or veer and kill everyone on the bus?

I’d flip the switch and then yell, “GET OUT OF THE WAY MORON!”

Neil.fun