Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from October, 2017

The Trolley Car Experiment and How it Relates to Gun Control

There's an interesting experiment in human psychology/morality that has been repeated numerous times over the years called The Trolley Car Dilemma. It goes by other names, too, but that's what I'll call it here. Imagine you're near some trolley tracks and a train is heading your way. There are five people on the tracks who cannot see or hear the train, nor you. The trolley is on a collision course with the five people, unable to stop, and you cannot help except by pulling a lever that would divert the trolley to another set of tracks. However, on those tracks there is one person, again unable to be notified of the situation. Should you pull the lever, thus allowing the trolley to strike the one person, killing her, but saving the five? What if there was a new twist? There is no lever, but you're standing on an overhead path (like the one in the picture above, overhead the trolley). You know that a very heavy object could stop the train, but unfortuna