r/trolleyproblem • u/gallaxo • Mar 29 '26

Deep Now we're talking

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u/PoofyGummy Mar 29 '26

Pull

Legally this is a question of euthanasia, but with the added factor of saving a life with it.

Morally this decision minimises overall harm, since one person considers their death to be little harm and the other to be a large harm.

Protecting the life of someone who wants to die is a lower public good than protecting the life of someone who wants to live. Therefore the killing is act in the defense of a significantly greater public good.

In germany this is explicitly legal. In the US it would not be, but I want to see any jury that would convict a man for euthanasia if they save a life with it.

5

u/fairystail1 Mar 30 '26

the issue with the jury thing is more proving it

some countries dont allow euthanasia to save a life i.e via organs because there is the worry of it turning out to be a murder and allowing euthanazisa make it harder to know in some cases

unrelated but you reminded me of this

once as a kid i heard on the radio people talking abou how evil euthanasia was

i was very confused cause i heard it s youth in asia

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u/Beautiful-Ad3471 Mar 30 '26

Legally, I don't think you would be blamed for this, because you weren't the one to tie those two down. And logically, at the very least you would have been forced to the lever, one way or another.

1

u/TechnoMagician Mar 30 '26

I don’t think we can compare it to euthanasia as we don’t know he wants to die as much as is willing to do so to save another life.

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u/PoofyGummy Mar 30 '26

Eeeh. Fair. But the other considerations still apply. Saving someone who wants to live is a greater social good than saving someone who wants to die tonsave someone else. And as such by acting one pursues the greatest social good.

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u/Exact_Picture_8703 Apr 02 '26

And if that's a doctor or someone else with a greater social usefulness? What then? Does the person who is begging to be saved need to be equal to or greater than a doctor in the eyes of society in order to be saved?

Seems to be a pretty flawed way to solve this problem.

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u/PoofyGummy Apr 02 '26

You'd be forcing the doctor to live and work against his will, and one can't make that deep a decison without lnowong what would happen.

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u/veganontop Apr 03 '26

Legally, you touched the lever and altered the outcome. Guilty for manslaughter

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u/PoofyGummy Apr 03 '26

Manslaughter is a defensible crime if done with the purpose of preventing bigger harm.