Trolley Problem Summary

With a snappy title like, “Compassion, Technology and World Peace” Andre Averbug brings to attention the “trolley problem” in ethics. Embedded in the article, the author places a Wikipedia link for the readers to further understand the trolley problem (coined by Philippa Foot in 1967).The premise of the trolley problem is that there are two tracks. On the first track there is a train headed towards a group of five people and on the second is one person. Whoever is being asked the question must decide whether or not to pull a lever that results in the train diverting and killing the single person rather than the five. Essentially, the hypothetical situation asks if it is the ethical decision to not intervene—resulting in the death of five people—or intervene by either directly or indirectly killing one other person. Averbug argues that “the more separated we are from the consequences (i.e. the deaths of either one or five people), the less responsible we feel for them”. To back his argument, he uses another alternative situation (also found in the …show more content…
In order to find where he sourced is information, the reader would have to read to the near bottom of the Wikipedia article and even then, there were no citations or evidence for the percentage given for the “fat man” variation of the trolley problem. Following the correct 90% for the lever question, there is a link to another populous article from healthland.time.com. The article from Time did reference a studies done by Michigan State by psychologist David Navarette that matched what Averbug argued, but did not include the differences in how the problem was presented. For Navarette’s study, there was a head mounted virtual-reality device used to elicit more of an emotional response from subjects while Averbug voided this and presented the study as a simple