Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-28781851-20161201002852/@comment-26234016-20161201122025

FirePyre wrote: Clearly you two aren't looking at the morality of the situation.

Tell yourself honestly, actually honestly, would you physically kill someone, would you end their life at your own hand, in order to save 5 people? Or would you let those 5 die? Becuase even though it is a greater loss of life, there is no blood on your hands.

The problem is better explained by telling the story more, for example, this is how I heard it (when I first heard it):

There is a train coming down the tracks, and you are the track operator. There are two possible tunnels that the train can go down, and it is automatically set to the right one - in the right one are 5 children who are playing a game. They are not allowed to be there, but kids usually act against the rules and that is what these kids are doing.

You might think the answer is obvious, right? Kill one person to save 5 kids, obviously you would make the choice. However, this version of the dilemma says that the person you would have to kill is a maintenance man who was paid to be there and was guaranteed safety. He believed that he was in no danger from the trains as you had guaranteed that any trains would not be coming his way, and he was trying to help you.

So the dilemma is this: Let five children die, although those children were not supposed to be there and are breaking the rules, or kill someone who was guaranteed safety.

I can't pick, to be honest. Neither option is fair. Oh wait, the moral machine is about which group should the car choose. The car should continue onwards, because those children are not supposed to be there.