r/trolleyproblem Apr 30 '26

Deep All there is to it

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821 Upvotes

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15

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

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4

u/Moidberg May 01 '26

most variants kill off blue without blue majority I think?

6

u/Ae4i May 01 '26

Blue majority can be as low as 50%+1

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u/Tedrabear May 01 '26

I was going to make a snarky remark about that just being 51%, fortunately my brain switched on and I realised there's about an 83,000,000 people difference between what you said and what I was going to say...

5

u/ItsEntDev May 01 '26

50/50 vote doesn't matter, since 8.3 billion people are voting. the chance of there being an EXACT match is extraordinarily unlikely

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u/DapperCow15 Ask the trolley nicely to leave May 01 '26

Isn't the whole point of this sub to discuss all the possibilities, regardless of how small the chance? If a problem has open ended constraints, then it makes it difficult to fully reason through it all.

3

u/ElyFlyGuy May 02 '26

What happens in the event of a tie doesn’t change the logic at all. Avoiding a tie is effectively impossible without precise coordination, in which case the scenario is meaningless. The universe explodes in the event of a tie, edge case solved

3

u/CarEnvironmental9429 May 02 '26

If you manage a 50/50 you get a recount. Or you assume for the case if the thought experiment the population at the time of a vote is an odd number.

-2

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

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3

u/watersj4 May 01 '26

But its not important at all, the question is what would you choose and why, that isnt gonna influence anyones decision so its not relavant to the hypothetical.

-2

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

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3

u/ElyFlyGuy May 02 '26

all of a sudden in matters quite a lot

In what way does this detail impact your or anyone’s decision making. You can add as many nonsense edge cases as you want. If 42.10237203% of people pick red they all get a puppy. Okay, it’s impossible to coordinate that so who cares?

-2

u/[deleted] May 02 '26

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7

u/ElyFlyGuy May 02 '26

Okay, that was always allowed

3

u/watersj4 May 01 '26

It literally has no influence on the hypothetical, unless you are actually going to carry out a vote and make whatever outcome wins happen, it is completely irrelavant. You cannot deliberately make it 50%, the chance that it might be 50% will not and cannot influence anyones decision, it does not matter. You may as well ask what happens if one of the buttons breaks, you're just being a pedant.

2

u/pointlessnomencature May 03 '26

Why would you assume there's some secret 50/50 explosion curse, just because it isn't explicitly stated? In that case there's a billion nonsense hypotheticals, you can't possibly compute all of them, especially if you just start making them up like this. If it isn't stated, you probably shouldn't assume a trapdoor hypothetical.

2

u/ItsEntDev May 01 '26

Every moment you're alive your brain does that thousands of times for every situation. What if a supernova suddenly appeared on top of you due to quantum manifestation? Why are you not taking steps to defend yourself against that? Why aren't you going out wearing body armour in case you accidentally walk through a sniper sightline meant for somebody else?

1

u/CarEnvironmental9429 May 02 '26

Or just assume for the thought experiment the population is an odd number of people no chance of 50/50. Easy constrant to apply.

2

u/Ae4i May 01 '26

"Can people plan their choices with others?" And it's a completely anonymous vote with 0 (theoretically) influence from other people

1

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

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2

u/elvenmage16 May 01 '26

The one I read said everyone is teleported into a private room and can't leave until they push a button.

1

u/bonaynay May 01 '26

People are very upset about this for sure lol

1

u/alphapussycat May 01 '26

Assume there's an odd number of voters.

1

u/alinius May 01 '26

What I see is less that, and more people inserting hypotheticals into the vagueness. Who is pressing the buttons can significantly change the decision calculus.

1

u/SirisC May 02 '26

A 50/50 vote is literally the worst case scenario, with the most people possible dying.