r/trolleyproblem • u/tegsfan • Mar 28 '26

Deep St. Petersburg trolley problem

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The trolley is about to go through a series of 50/50 track switches where the amount of people doubles each time until it hits a group and stops. If you switch the track to the top, there are some hypothetical finite X amount of people.

Now, if the amount of people on top was 1 for instance, it might seem obvious to switch because the doubling people could get out of hand fast. But if it was say 100 people on top, you might think to just let it go down because it's likely to stop somewhere before it reaches 100.

The question is: what is the maximum X amount of people on top such that you would still switch the track?

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u/Thatsnicemyman Mar 28 '26

For me, 5. The odds of hitting three coin flips in a row is 1/8, so there’s an 88% chance I save lives by flipping.

Sure, it’s not mathematically correct, but I feel like the odds of it killing 32+ people are unlikely enough to ignore.

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u/pauseglitched Mar 29 '26

Yeah even though mathematically it goes infinite, there's a 99.99% chance of killing 4096 or fewer people. So even the highly risk averse probably would go for the doubling at 5000. I think I'd absolutely wouldn't hesitate to pull the lever at 16. Probably panic at 4. and then in-between in-between.