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The trolley problem asks whether you would pull a lever to divert a runaway trolley away from five people on the track, knowing it will then kill one person on a side track.

Philosophy

Philosophy

The story behind the card

The English philosopher Philippa Foot described a version of the dilemma in 1967, in an article on abortion and the ethics of harming some people to save others. The American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson named it “the trolley problem” in 1976 and later made a harder variant famous: instead of pulling a lever, you could stop the trolley by pushing a large man off a footbridge. The numbers are the same, yet most people who would pull the lever refuse to push. In one large online survey about nine in ten people said diverting the trolley was acceptable, and brain-scan studies since 2001 suggest the pushing version engages emotion far more strongly. The puzzle now shapes debates on self-driving cars: MIT's Moral Machine website gathered about 40 million decisions from 233 countries and territories and found clear differences between them.

Türkçe oku
Tramvay problemi şunu sorar: Freni boşalmış bir tramvay raylardaki beş kişiye doğru ilerliyor. Makas kolunu çekip tramvayı yan yola saptırırsanız beş kişi kurtulacak, ama o yolda duran bir kişi ölecek. Kolu çeker miydiniz?

İngiliz filozof Philippa Foot, bu ikilemin bir biçimini 1967'de, kürtaj ve bazı insanlara zarar vererek başkalarını kurtarmanın ahlakı üzerine yazdığı bir makalede anlattı. Amerikalı filozof Judith Jarvis Thomson 1976'da ona “tramvay problemi” adını verdi, daha sonra da daha zor bir türünü ünlü yaptı: Bu kez kol yoktur; tramvayı durdurmanın tek yolu, bir köprünün üstünden iri yapılı bir adamı raylara itmektir. Sayılar aynıdır, ama kolu çekeceğini söyleyenlerin çoğu adamı itmeyi reddeder. Büyük bir çevrimiçi ankette her on kişiden dokuzu tramvayı saptırmayı kabul edilebilir buldu. 2001'den bu yana yapılan beyin görüntüleme çalışmaları da adamı itme seçeneğinin duyguları çok daha güçlü harekete geçirdiğini gösteriyor. Aynı soru bugün sürücüsüz otomobillerin nasıl programlanacağı tartışmasında da karşımıza çıkıyor: MIT'nin Moral Machine sitesi 233 ülke ve bölgeden yaklaşık 40 milyon karar topladı ve ülkeler arasında belirgin farklar buldu.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Trolley problem
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