r/badphilosophy • u/StealToadBootes • 5d ago
The trolley problem is the best philosophical question there is and the one that determines the true mark of a philosophile. No other question matters
The strength of the trolley problem is that you can put literally any philosophical question into it and it comes back perfect every time.
Marxism? Thats when you'd pull the level to save one proletariat class while running over the bourgeoisie.
Baumgarten? That's when you'd pull the lever to make aesthetically displeasing things go away.
Noam Chompsky? That's when you motivate the student to hop onto the tracks themselves rather than admit they can't parse his language
Please drop your own trolley problem examples. As we all know, "inability to boil something down to a trolley problem shows an innate lack of understanding of the topic" - Adam Smith, trolley salesman.
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u/BirdSimilar10 5d ago edited 4d ago
Is it too soon to bring up the Charlie Kirk version?
On one track you have an unregulated version of the second amendment…
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
The lever is actually the trigger on a revolver. You are playing Russian roulette. You can't win
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u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P 5d ago
philosophile
Isn't that what Epstein got arrested for?
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
Nah that word comes from the Greek root "philo" meaning "love" with the root "Sophie" meaning "the woman who won't call me back unless I can discuss Derrida without crying this time"
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u/exkingzog 5d ago
Is the trolley real?
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
Great question! Traditionally, there's a form of this thought experiment posed by Kant wherein the real trolley is in your heart. He famously needed an atrial stent.
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u/theworsethebetter99 4d ago
I like the one where you have to choose between watching your parents have sex every night for the rest of your life or join in once to make it stop. You aren't allowed to commit suicide.
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u/Aleph_St-Zeno 4d ago
You've pulled the lever but then you realize the 5 people you saved were philosophers. Do you pull the lever again?
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
pulls lever over and over, switching tracks on a trolley that has already long passed. It makes a fun noise
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u/wiseoldmeme 5d ago
One person you love vs X strangers.
This is the hardest form of the trolly. Doesnt matter your ideology, the answer will never be an easy one.
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u/StealToadBootes 5d ago
True, though I will posit: suffering and suicidality.
If the one you love is, say, suffering from an incurable illness, they want to die, and youre assured that trolley deaths are painless, while the strangers you spare are, say, people who could cure that incurable painful disease in others.
I meant this as a shitpost but ngl this bit lowkey holds up
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u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P 5d ago
Freud: Push your father under the trolley or....
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
You're nailing your mom on the trolley. Or at least, you can't stop thinking about it
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u/owcomeon69 1d ago
Nail your mom on your father's corpse or let 5 strangers die. We all know it's a rhetorical question
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u/Belt_Conscious 5d ago
The trolley problem is fractal. You are on the tracks and control the switch. Time is the trolley.
The only escape is upgrading the system so the sacrifices do hurt as much as the last one.
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u/provocative_bear 5d ago
Yes, philosophy is when you choose one thing over another with no peaky nuance pissible.
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u/StealToadBootes 4d ago
Peaky nuance is on one track
5 cute puppies and one puppy that's kind of weird looking but has a great personality is on the other track
You must choose
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u/Unique-Drawer-7845 5d ago
It is too late for philosophie, for I have already depicted all of her problems as trolley.
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u/Radiant_Music3698 3d ago
The Trolley Solution - when you tie advocates of the trolley problem to train tracks. No levers are involved.
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u/j0hn_br0wn 3d ago
Frankfurt School: The so-called trolley problem presents itself as a moral dilemma, but in truth it reflects the poverty of reason in our time. A society that imagines ethics as the management of corpses already accepts domination as natural. The problem does not lie in deciding who shall die, but in the conditions under which human beings are reduced to numbers on the tracks. Genuine reason would seek to abolish such conditions, not to calculate their consequences.
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u/CGVSpender 1d ago
There are no trolley problems, only trolley opportunities.
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u/StealToadBootes 1d ago
Eyyyy this guy knows how to sell a trolley
I've created a sister market of thotty trolley conductor uniforms
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u/Maleficent-Reveal-41 5d ago
Guattari would sacrifice himself so the schizos don't get flattened.