That1Cellist

Okay, okay. I'm back from not being on here to post another rant about a relatively niche topic that nobody cares about. Sorry, but thank you to everyone who actually reads it.

Music Recommendation: Parasyte-the Maxiim OST: "NEXT TO YOU".

Anyway...

I believe that The Trolley Problem is fundamentally misunderstood by most people. Most of us see it and think, "Ah, so it's a numbers game." and flip the lever to keep the five people alive. However, this is due to a lack of understanding. In the trolley problem, when you do nothing, you don't really bear responsibility for the deaths of those people. Sure, you chose to not save them, but you didn't actively choose for them to die. Plus, if you hit the lever, you are actively deciding to kill somebody. If you look at the problem as just pure numbers, you obviously flip the lever. But if you truly understand that flipping the lever means you take direct responsibility for the death of a person to save others, the option of not flipping the lever and just having those people die becomes a lot more logical. The question of the trolley problem isn't as much about numbers as it is about responsibility, and I believe that if most of us were actually put into the situation of the trolley problem, we wouldn't pull the lever. (Even assuming bystander effect doesn't kick in, which is a pretty big if) I don't want to kill someone, and even though five people might die, I didn't technically kill those people. Sure, I would feel guilt for not saving them, but, in my opinion, choosing to actively flip the switch and kill someone would be terribly frightful.