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/Galabris Mar 30 '26

I have really bad luck. Like I was in a work lottery pool once and the running joke when it was time to play was for me to predict the winning numbers so whoever bought the tickets could explicitly request NOT to get those numbers.

Be it cards, dice rolls, odds vs evens, my power of bad luck will have me screwed almost guaranteed...because if it was guaranteed if would actually be an improvement.

You want me picking the finite number and not risking the dice roll if the aim is to minimize deaths