The answer is obvious. You need 2 trolleys to take both tracks.
Infinite Suffering
Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Comments
over_clox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
kamiheku@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING!!
over_clox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Look at this genius here, optimizing the solution… 😂🤣
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
People = good
People = good
Why is that so hard to remember?
kinsnik@lemmy.world 6 months ago
well, with 2 trolleys it is the same amount of suffering as with 1
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’d to top case since the number of peoole killed would converge to -1/12 meaning no suffering
muix@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
I thought that was for the sum of all positive integers (1+2+3+…). The sum if ones converges to -½.
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 6 months ago
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
That sum is wrong: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIIjLr6vUA
rbn@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
I go for option 1.
In all programming languages that I know, integers have a maximum number. E.g., in C that’d be 2,147,483,647. After that, you would run into an overflow, resulting in either…
- a crash (train stops, no more deaths),
- death count suddenly turns negative (all people previously killed are suddenly alive again and even new people are generated out of nowhere) - until we reach the next overflow when people disappear and start dying again
- or - if it’s an unsigned integer - death count resets everytime we reach the maximum limit
So compared to option 2, we have a chance of stopping the death count. And even if the train keeps running, we have essentially option 2 but the same people only die very rarely. If we assume a cycle of 1 death per second and an integer boundary of 2,147,483,647, that’s just one death every 68 years per person involved. Seems more fair to me compared to 100 people constantly dying over and over again.
mattd@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wojwo@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Or is it like a Y2K death trolly and when the overflow happens the universe doesn’t catch the exception and things get weird. Like suddenly any number can be divided by 0.
fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Yeah okay but by that logic you’d also have to quantize time and the suffering would end either way in a finite amount of time.
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
They used database to store integer…
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Ah, but eventually the trolley breaks down, and in the case of the reincarnating circle, you end up with zero deaths (but a whole lot of Therapy)
stinerman@midwest.social 6 months ago
Where I’m from Calc 2 is integrals. That wasn’t so terrible. It was Calc 3 (vectors and series) that was the hard one.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
At the universities I went to, Calc 2 was integration, sequences and series, then Calc 3 was multivariable. They really pack all the harder parts into 2.
someacnt_@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I thought this was taught in high school…
stinerman@midwest.social 6 months ago
We were on quarters, so we had calc 1-4. Makes sense that Calc 2 was rough if you were on semesters.
CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I managed until university when I left calculus and entered “Linear Algebra” and man, I really don’t like matrices.
stinerman@midwest.social 6 months ago
I made it through. My degree is actually in math. 15 years ago, I used to know what an abelian group is!
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
I found linear algebra super hard until I learned it a second and then third time, from different angles. I found it harder to understand when it was taught in a pure maths context, but coming at it from the applied side made me go “oh, so that’s why that’s like that”
BakedCookie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
My multivariate calc was a separate course from regular calc 1/2/3
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 6 months ago
Arguably these are different amounts of bad even before considering this: We generally consider existing preferable to non-existence to some extent when suffering isnt taken into account, consider that if you murder someone quickly and painlessly in their sleep without waking them, they dont really themselves suffer from it, but people will still find you to be a murderer, and would object to the idea that you might do it to them. In the top example, killing the people actually kills them, but in the lower example, it arguably doesnt, because the experiences of the people involved never actually cease, therefore, the lower paths seems to me to be preferable because you supposedly get equivalent amounts of “suffering”, but different amounts of time that people spend in non-existence.
Johanno@feddit.org 6 months ago
Morally speaking people could argue that torturing immortal people is worse.
However legally speaking to you don’t kill them and therefore the immortals are preferred.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 6 months ago
Cant you just take people from the track with reincarnating people? They might have to die a couple of times, but thats nothing compared to infinity
BreadOven@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I think the ones in the loop become Cenobites.
j4k3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The abominable billionaire loop makes me happy
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well their heads aren’t on the tracks and they’re immortal, I bet we could rig some kind of device to make them total praplegics and then work on a direct neural interface so they can use computers while they lay there endlessly having their bodies painlessly trisected.
qaz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or we could just untie them
desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
nah
SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hell couldn’t be real because humans would eventually fetishize any pain input and dump buckets forever.
Some webcomic I saw back in the earlier days of the Internet
HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Allegedly it isn’t a place where you are tortured, but instead a state of permanent depression from being cut off from God. Just the former is easier for pop culture to portray.
Xyprus@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Also, Option 1 would essentially mean the end of the human race. Assuming the rate of killing is faster than the birth rate it would mean everyone dies soon
Incandemon@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I mean, no? Its given in the question that option one is an infinite amount of people. Its not limited to just the existing human race.
frauddogg@hexbear.net 6 months ago
This is the kind of trolley problem that makes Cenobites.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Isn’t Stockholm Syndrome fake?
BobGnarley@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Actually upon looking it up, there is some suggestion that it is fake.
Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 6 months ago
No?
5oap10116@lemmy.world 6 months ago
People really complaining about Calc 2?
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
It can be, usually for college credit though
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Isn’t the top case just how things are now?
Iceblade02@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Programmer asks: how many bits for the integer?
At 32 bits it’s “just” a Thanos snap
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
One must imagine Maths grads happy
anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
i
chknbwl@lemmy.world 6 months ago
sqrt(-1)