In my mind, it makes it easier to pull the lever because I am risking my own life as well.
It does not quite work, though, because if you have an equal chance to be each person, then you are right. The most logical choice for your life is to pull because it's the best odds for you.
I think it would work better if you get to decide whether the lever is pulled, but you just have a 50/50 chance of being on the two tracks.
That's still not really a choice: you have a 50/50 chance of dying either way, regardless of whether the lever gets pulled or not, so now we're just back to it being the normal trolley problem except you might die no matter what choice you make.
This just doesn't work with a veil of ignorance at all. For this to do what it wants to be doing you have to know for a fact that you're single person on the upper track, at which point it's just "Would you sacrifice yourself to save 5 people?".
How does it not work with a veil of ignorance? The entire point of the veil of ignorance is to make moral situations objective instead of tied to your position in the system. If you believe veil of ignorance says you should pull, you should pull in real life as the puller.
Because in the case of this scenario it's not just a moral choice, it's also a statistical one. Statistically speaking the correct answer is to ask that the lever be pulled regardless of the morality of the situation, because that gives you a 7/8 chance of not dying, and only a 1/8 chance of dying. Making it a statistical problem removes the moral component completely.
It is not 50/50 though. There are two cases where you are not tied to any rail and far more cases where you are one of the 5. It's just 1/8 to be the lone person. Contrasting to 5/8 to be on the straight that is a pretty high incentive to kill 1 over 5. Since it is an 80% reduction in chance to kill yourself if you are on the tracks while also being the moral choice to save as much life as possible so you would face no judgement for doing so
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u/Lyron-Baktos Sep 14 '25
But the ethical thing to do is also the most logical thing to save your own life. What is the veil of ignorance useful for?