Comment on Recursion

blackstampede@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• aseriesoftubes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If you’re not, it’s the guy killing a million people a couple of iterations later

  I feel like running over all those bodies would make the train come to a stop way before it ran over a million people.

  Now I sit back and wait for some morbid soul who is better at math and physics than me to figure out the answer.

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  • Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Now if we assume the victims tied up are frictionless orbs, and the train is also a frictionless orb, and the two of them are travelling in a frictionless void than I reckon we could kill a few more.

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    • LaggyKar@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      But then would they die if they don’t slow the train down? The train would necessarily have to impart some energy in order to effect a change in their bodies.

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      • exu@feditown.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Maybe the train is an unstoppable force.

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    • tetraodon@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I guess sticking people in the void is a good way to kill them in any case.

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  • Reliant1087@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean if you’re going fast enough with a pointy train, you could chop up people pretty easy. You just need to make sure that each person is a tire width apart to make sure the wheels don’t lose traction. Assuming a person is roughly half a metre across and a tire is 75cm in diameter, we get 1.25m per person, so a track of 1250km for a million people. Not very long at all.

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• kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  On the one hand, the possibility exists that the buck gets passed forever, especially as the kill count numbers grow substantially making the impermissibility of allowing the deaths grow with it. It’s not likely the any given person would kill one stranger, let alone millions.

  On the other hand, in an infinite series, even something with miniscule odds will still eventually inevitably happen, and some psycho will instantly become the most infamous murderer in history, followed immediately by the person that didn’t just kill one person and end the growth before it started.

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• rockSlayer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Exactly. If you have the means at hand, you have the responsibility to act. At the risk of taking a shitpost way too seriously, if you were in that situation and actively chose to leave the decision to someone else to kill double the people, then you acted unethically.

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  • Zellith@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Technically the 2nd guy could just let it go through and nobody dies. However if it was to double over and over forever until it stopped, then technically the best option is to just double it forever. Nobody would ever die?

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    • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Pretty sure there’s a base case when you run out of people to tie to the tracks.

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      • FarceMultiplier@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Except, given finite resources, the tracks would run out before having enough space for 8 billion tied-up people.

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      • FunderPants@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yes, say there are 2^33 people for illustrations sake, by 33 decisions you (the first puller) are guaranteed to be dead too. At 32 it’s 50/50, the odds increase as the decisions get made. From a self preservation standpoint the best thing you can do to minimize your personal risk is pull the lever. It also happens to kill the fewest other people.

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    • Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s on them, but it affects thousands or millions of others.

      As such if you can prevent that, and don’t, it’s also on you too.

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      • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I think that’s bad logic. The choice everyone has is kill or not kill. I can’t be held responsible for someone deciding to pick kill when they have the ability to pick not kill.

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    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      True, since we’re analyzing a hypothetical ethical question I shouldn’t leave any open assumptions. I made the assumption that at some point, at least one person will have to die, as in I see this trolley problem as a situation where at the end there is no choice and the maximum number of people die.

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• docAvid@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I agree with your logic, so far as it goes. However, there are, currently, just over eight billion humans in existence. If my quick, over-tired math is correct, that means only 34 people have to say no, until we run out of people to tie to the tracks. Assuming, at that point, the system collapses and nobody dies, I’d guess 34 people would refuse - might be the better choice.

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  • bstix@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Would you trust the entirety of human existence to be decided by 34 people? In my experience from watching reality TV, the last one always screws the rest over for their own benefit.

    Imagine being the last one. You could singlehandedly wipe out half the global population. This would normally be a bad thing, and it is, but it would also make every surviver twice as rich, solve food scarcity and halve the pollution, perhaps even saving humanity from itself.

    If that’s not enough, think about everyone now having double the amount of kittens and half the traffic on the roads.

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  • blackstampede@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh yeah. I was assuming an infinite series (somehow). Also, odds are good that out of 34 people, one of them would misunderstand the rules or be crazy enough to do it anyway for various reasons. I’d probably still do it.

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    • docAvid@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You weren’t wrong, the meme implies an infinite series, and I might be cheating to apply real-world constraints to an absurd hypothetical.

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  • Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    After we run out of people, they start adding cats & dogs.

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    • docAvid@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yikes! Pull the lever now!

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• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  But what if you’re the tenth person with 1024 on the line? Or the 20th person with 1,048,576? Etc. Is there ever a point (before it’s everyone, in which case risk doesn’t increase) where you stop pulling it?

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