Comment on Sleeping Beauty Trolley Problem

• wahming@monyet.cc ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The original phrasing could use some work

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• KidsTryThisAtHome@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m pretty sure it’s a 5/6 chance you’d be on side a. And a 1/6 chance you are on side b, depending on what the villain rolls with the die. But the problem is there’s no way to know which track the trolley is on, or where the real lever sends it. You’d just as easily be killing yourself as you would be 1 or 10 other people.

  So there’s a very good chance you’re by yourself on the track (or a small chance you’re with other people), but you have literally no idea what pushing the lever with your foot will do, even if it is the real one, and you have no idea if the trolley is even on your track or not.

  There is no solution to this without more information. You can’t be selfish or utilitarian if it comes down to a 50/50 guess.

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  • TauZero@mander.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    there’s no way to know which track the trolley is on

    It’s a standard trolley meme problem, the trolley will keep going on the main track unless the lever is switched 😁. I thought !science_memes would be familiar with trolley problems, but I guess I get to introduce some of you! You might want to start off on some easier trolley memes first, this is advanced level stuff.

    where the real lever sends it

    There is not usually ambiguity with the lever. If you wish, you can have an announcement in the headphones “main track… side track…” every time you flip the lever. Your only uncertainty is which track you yourself are bound to, given how you’re blindfolded.

    there’s a 0.017% chance

    1/6 * 10% = 1/60 = 0.01666… = 1.666…% ~= 1.7%! Careful there!

    It’s not really a trolley problem, because in both scenarios a track is empty,

    Everything is a trolley problem.

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