Hypothetical: The train is out of control, who dies?

I’d blow the train’s whistle and hope all seven workers don’t happen to be oblivious

Uhm…warn them. I’m not making that choice. They better know how to run – if they don’t, what the hell are they doing working on the train tracks anyway?

Warn them. If the workers are not trapped or unconscious they’ll move. If the train is 15 seconds away they’ll be able to hear it already: it makes the tracks vibrate for a good long distance.

I just saw this trailer and thought…Wow, someone’s making an entire movie out of that huh? Then I remembered that one movie about the run away bus with the bomb….Anyway….
It’s a train. Blow the whistle. People will move. I’m gonna go with the 15% chance.

Wow, they run to the other track and I have just pulled the lever and take out 7. Perhaps one of them has a fear of cows and we can release the bovine terrors and everyone lives.

I’d blow the horn!! Not once but a bunch of times!! 15 seconds is a huge amount of time to get out of the way and unless this was a road crew of deaf workers you can hear a train whistle from a mile away and a train 15 seconds away would be quite loud!

Why can’t I warn the two workers and pull the lever?

@judochop That movie is based on something that actually happened. They’re going to change stuff around of course, but the general idea was based on true events.

I’d flip the switch. In my opinion these types of scenarios tend to lend themselves to utilitarianism. When you’re only dealing with 1 life, then other moral systems often tend to make more sense.

I’m also partial to the moral theory of John Rawls which roughly states that things are right/wrong based on how we would create them in a veil of ignorance. Basically, this means that if we could all get together when we were yet-to-be-born, we don’t know if we’re going to be train-conductors, rail workers, or rich/poor, smart/dumb, slow/fast etc. how would we want people to behave in that scenario knowing we could either be the victim or the guy forced with making the choice. If we had to make one law that would be as fair as possible to all people in this situation, then that would be the right thing to do.

Record the carnage & stick it on youtube!

Pull the lever. There is no difference between an action and an omission, and the chance of saving the workers by warning them is too low.

(I assume the reason we cannot pull the lever and warn the two workers is that we are too far away to do both actions in the time available. Otherwise, that would be my preference.)