Would you sacrifice one person to save five? - Eleanor Nelsen
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/would-you-sacrifice-one-person-to-save-five-eleanor-nelsen Imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling ...
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Imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks straight towards five workers who can't escape. You happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. Here's the problem. That track has a worker on it, too, but just one. What do you do? Do you sacrifice one person to save five? This is the trolley problem, a version of an ethical dilemma that philosopher Philippa Foot devised in 1967. It's popular because it forces us to think about how to choose when there are no good choices. Do we pick the action with the best outcome or stick to a moral code that prohibits causing someone's death? In one survey, about 90% of respondents said that it's okay to flip the switch, letting one worker die to save five, and...
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Imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks straight towards five workers who can't escape. You happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. Here's the problem. That track has a worker on it, too, but just one. What do you do? Do you sacrifice one person to save five? This is the trolley problem, a version of an ethical dilemma that philosopher Philippa Foot devised in 1967. It's popular because it forces us to think about how to choose when there are no good choices. Do we pick the action with the best outcome or stick to a moral code that prohibits causing someone's death? In one survey, about 90% of respondents said that it's okay to flip the switch, letting one worker die to save five, and...
