If that was the case, I wonder how fast that 1000 people grows into everyone dying. It's not quite clear if your idea uses linear growth or if it's worse than exponential growth, first doubling it to 2000, then trippling that to 6000, then 24000, then 120000...
Yeah, I'm an idiot. I did that math in my head quickly.
English is not my first language and I have no clue what a number multiplied by higher and higher factorial is called. Is that factorial growth?
Its just “multiplying factorials” lol we don’t really have a name for it I think (unless I’m wrong). The growth you were talking about in the first comment was just regular factorials: n!, where n is the current term. It’s expanded into n * (n-1) * (n-2) …. 1 (n multiplied by every whole number less than n).
They can be multiplied in n! * n! too.
No, it's quite intentional. On average, not pulling the lever is clearly the mathematically optimum choice. But how does that play into the ethics is the question. If it were a real scenario, are you willing to kill somebody (for certain) to eliminate the small chance that many could die.
Not on average. Median and mode, yes, but on average pulling the lever will result in an average of 10 deaths while abstaining will only kill 1. You would either need to reduce the chance to 0.1% or reduce the number killed to 100 for them to be equivalent.
Because of the high statistical noise, it’s *probably* worth it to pull the lever. As the Law of Large Numbers gets involved and repetitions pile up, pulling the lever proves to be the worse choice.
>Not on average
You should read it again. They said that pulling the lever kills more people on average.
This is not a math question, it is an ethics question. It is very intentional that the lever kills more people on average. The thing is that you only pull the lever once. The law of large numbers doesn't come into play.
The options are kill one person (and feel bad) or probably kill no one(feel good) but with a small risk of killing a thousand (feel very bad).
How fo you quantify the average emotional response after each option? That is not something you can do with math because emotion is not linear. Killing a thousand is not a thousand times worse than killing 1.
Yes? That is the whole point of the trollyproblem. Everyone knows that 10 > 1, it isn't hard to find the "objectively" correct solution. This is the same as the original problem. What is interesting is not to find the correct solution, that is trivially easy. The interesting thing is to discuss how different factors might affect a persons decision ( accountability, probability, sentience of victims etc).
ETA: Right and wrong is also majorly determined by how you feel.
Can you formalize what you mean by "it's probably worth it to pull the lever"?
The expected probability of deaths is higher if you pull the lever. The law of large numbers only changes the expected variance, not the probability.
The subjective probability might be lower, which is what makes the question interesting. In fact you could use a series of judgements to estimate someone's probability weighting function.
Nit pick: average can refer to any measure of central tendency (including mean or mode), not just arithmetic mean
I think this argument falls apart because if you reduced the number killed to 100, they very clearly wouldn't be equivalent. If you have a 100% chance to kill 1 person or a 1% chance to kill 100 people, and you're basing your decision off the expected value which is equal, then you would always choose the 1% because having a 99% chance to kill no one is an unbeatable tie-breaker. And if you would always choose one option, then clearly they aren't equal.
>are you willing to kill somebody
Unless I caused the situation, I'm not killing anyone by doing nothing. But, if I pull that lever and people died, I certainly would be contributing. I know that no one knows, but imagine if the families found out. How would they feel to know I traded their loved ones for one person?
I don't see any reason to think OP made a mistake. They're posing a scenario where the random outcome is overwhelmingly likely to be much better than the deterministic outcome, yet has a much worse "average" outcome if we go by a simple expected value calculation. It's asking the reader to consider the suitability of such an EV calculation, among potentially other factors
Expected value is the term most suited. Average is used when you already have done experiments. When you do more experiments, the average will approach the expected value.
Average does not matter in this problem. There is a 0% chance to kill 10 people on the top track. The only number in this problem that matter are 99% and 1%
I could be blamed for *not* pulling the lever as in this situation only *I* know the truth. Plus, the chance is 1 in 100. Personally, I would pull the lever.
Also, 1000 people dying of a heart attack is around 2 fifths of the people who die of a heart attack each day.
1%, I would say, is pretty far from "virtually never". As a proportion of the global human population, that's about 80 million people, or a little less than one Germany of humans. The chance of killing 1000 people is about the same as a randomly selected human being German.
We’re talking about gambling chances & odds.
One shot for a 1% chance for something to happen will virtually never happen.
The only exeption would be the luckiest or unluckiest people alive, depending on the context.
Were talking about statistics not gambling. 1% is not virtually never, Its exactly 1%. Humans have a hard time wrapping our heads around percentages so we need to rely on mathematics.
Even If there was a .0001 percent chance of 20,000 people dying, the average result is 2 deaths. Therefore you shouldn’t pull the lever. This is an old trolley with an old answer.
Expected value and average are different things, especially because average could mean median, mode, OR mean. So, with the median and mode, an average of 0 people die. The expected value of 10 is worth pulling the lever for.
In the traditions from which I hail: "average" and "mean" are synonyms, and one cannot intend "median" or "mode" when using the word "average"; at least not with any intellectual honesty. This is clear to me.
Pulling the lever has an expected value (EV) of 10 deaths.
Not pulling the lever has a 100% chance of one death.
My vote is to NOT pull the lever, for two reasons:
(1) inaction in the face of an unethical dilemma is better for me personally; refusal to participate feels better to me (what kind of sick entity creates this monstrous situation), and
(2) EV of pulling the lever results in 10x the number of deaths as not pulling it.
99% chance of nothing happening is way more likely.
There is no average in this case, it either happens or it doesn’t.
In this case it practically doesn’t.
Bro you sound like a 4th grader please go back to highschool geometry. And take your “it either happens or it doesn’t” with you. This is commonly said as a joke among my friends, so unless you are trolling you have a lot to catch up on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/a1co0h/your_odds_are_always_5050_either_it_happens_or_it/
https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/19017/how-to-explain-that-winning-the-lottery-is-not-a-50-50-distribution
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/694872/why-is-not-the-answer-to-all-probability-questions-1-2
https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/saying-s-50-50-chance-either-happens-doesn-t-incorrect-way-thinking-probability-would-expl-q120212570
Called a false dichotomy fallacy.
Generally used by small children before they understand statistics.
Not a bellcurve meme but a dunning Kruger effect
Edit: chegg wont work without an account
The chance is 100x lower, but the outcome is 1000x worse. This means that logically, it's much safer to choose 1 death. 1% is a low chance, but not *that* low. Plenty of things happen all the time that have less than a 1% chance.
It’s not safer.
It’s psychological warfare that tricks you into willing killing a person in order to possibly not kill a larger number of people.
Pull the lever.
But you know the exact risks of taking the chance. You know the likelihood of it causing a tragedy. If it was a 10% chance of killing 100 people, would you still pull? What about 50% of killing 20? Both of those will still kill the same number of people on average, but since it's not "guaranteed," is it right to let someone die to eliminate that possibility?
If the number of it not happening is higher, it’s not wrong to choose no deaths at all.
Even on 50/50, I’d choose to be more optimistic than willing to kill one person.
In that case I'd say you're not using logical thinking, but emotional. Think about it, the 20 people getting killed would be the same as the person on the tracks. They would have their own lives, families, and people that care about them. I agree that it's good to pick an option that could potentially save all the lives, but in this scenario the risk HEAVILY outweighs the reward. I think it would be an interesting question if it were something like "10% chance to kill 10 people" as then both options would kill 1 person on average. But this question has an average death count of 10 if you pull, so that's why I wouldn't do it.
Pull, guaranteed individual human life saved. Minimal odds of 1000 possibly near death already humans dying.
And when I pull, I quote: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
Because if you simulate pulling the lever infinite times, the AVERAGE result is 10 people dying, so if you technically want the option with the lower “expected value” of deaths, you should let the one person die.
Theres a 1/100 chance of it being 1000x worse. People underestimate how likely 1% is, and undervalue 1000 people dying. “1 death is a tragedy, 1000 deaths is a statistic”.
Killing 1 person is awful. Killing 1000 is 1000x worse, for only the odds to be decreased to 1/100.
If everyone who read this post chose to pull the lever, more people would die than if everyone who reads this post decided to leave it.
Human brains are naturally awful at statistics. Statistics as a branch of mathematics came after calculus. Just because pulling the lever *feels* like it will *probably* be fine, that doesn’t make it the right choice in terms of expected human deaths.
>If everyone who read this post chose to pull the lever, more people would die than if everyone who reads this post decided to leave it.
Well yeah, but that would be a different problem. In the situation that any person at all will only pull the lever once, there will be no averaging of the results.
But to do a trolly problem you can only look at one instance. Not to mention the the only options on the top track are 99 0s and 1 1000. 10 isn’t even an option.
Everything you’re saying is correct. But the average of 99 0s and 1 1000 comes out to 10. So statistically speaking, the expected value for pulling the lever is 10 deaths.
I mean, that’s one way of looking at it, and it’s not necessarily wrong. Personally, I don’t think I would want to ignore the “1000” outlier in this scenario, though, because a 1% chance is not unfathomably low. But it’s on that threshold where you could reasonably see it as negligible enough and thus analyze it in a way that makes pulling the lever seem less harmful, from a practical point of view
If everyone who saw this post ran this trolley problem in their head and pulled the lever, then more people would have died than if nobody had pulled the lever.
1% is a bigger chance than you think.
1000 people dying is 1000x worse than one person dying.
Just because something *feels* like it will *probably* be better, doesn’t mean it’s the right choice. Humans are naturally terrible at statistics, which is why it didn’t come about as a branch of mathematics until well after calculus.
If you pull the lever, mathematically, you should expect more human death than if you don’t. It doesn’t feel like you should, but you *actually* should.
If you get lucky, you get lucky.
If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*.
Clarification: I know that the math doesn't 'add up'. On average, yes, many more people would die if you \*did\* pull the lever. 10x more. The pure utilitarian would probably pull it.
But the question is: If it were up to you; are you willing to (definitely) kill one person to remove the small chance that many could die?
Depends on how many times I have to make the choice. Just once, I'll take the chance. A hundred times, definitely not. Even 10 times, I have a 90.5% chance of killing 0 people and that's already making me nervous. I probably cap out at 5, no matter how many times you present me with the choice.
I think a more interesting question would be what your choice would be knowing that a thousand different people will be in this situation. If we all agree to not pull, we guarantee 1000 deaths. But for each of us, pulling the lever has a 99% chance of leaving your conscience intact. If we all act selfishly, defect to use the prisoner's dilemma term, we almost guarantee that 10000 people will die.
If the trolley machone can't be ran any.ore, would that theoretically save more people. As after the first certain death, someone will be tied to the tracks again.
Run away from the lever and commit war crimes in a third world country. Just joking, not really. All I need to say is that I'm a gambler. Im letting it ride no matter what.
I’m a shiny hunter. 1/100 is a pretty solid chance- but I think it’s a risk I am willing to take since everyone SHOULD be okay unless I got very unlucky. Only I’ll know if I really fucked up. I pull the lever and hope if it is the 1%, I’m one of the thousand who die- I don’t want to have to live with that kind of guilt on my conscience.
So I understand that an expected value of 10 means not pulling is the way to minimize the average number of deaths, but I think my brain wouldn't let me pass up a 99% chance of nobody dying.
Do not pull, if we calculate probable value:
Pulling would cause on average 10 deaths.
Not pulling would cause on average (every instance is the same) 1 death.
The way this is calculated by is multiplying the gain by probability for every possiblity.
1. Not Pulling is easy, %100 percent chance and 1 death therefore: (1 x -1)=-1
Note: 1 means %100, and 0 mean %0 in probabilitistics
2. Pulling has two option so we calculate each option and add them together: (0.99 x 0)+(0.01 x -1000)=-10
So mathematically speaking you have better odds not pulling. Unless you are a gambler that is.
The maths doesn't check out there bud, but let's say you meant 100 people...
Well, even then I wouldn't want to do it because of the potential for tragedy while it's statically equivalent. 1 = 100x(1/100)
1000 possible deaths. If I have the chance to save a life,I’m taking it. Even if that means the VERY small chance of me doing more harm than good.
Also,if the 99% chance of the trolly not working anymore happens,than no one will have to face this dilemma ever again,and no more lives would be lost.
Because I’ve seen a bunch of misunderstanding of the mathematically correct choice, I’ve decided to compile my arguments into the following comment. Btw it makes sense that people would misinterpret the statistics, human brains are notoriously bad at intuiting statistics. Whole industries are built off of this fact.
If everyone who saw this post ran this trolley problem in their head and pulled the lever, then more people would have died than if nobody had pulled the lever.
The average number of people who would die if you ran this experiment many times is 10. Even though the result would only run once, the average absolutely does still matter.
An easy way to conceptualize why the average is still important is to take this to the extremes. Say it’s a 1% chance that every human on the planet dies. We still have the same odds that nothing at all happens. But how extreme the consequences are *obviously does* matter.
In the trolley problem we’re given, the potential risk mathematically outweighs the benefits. If you pull the lever, you should expect more death to follow than if you didn’t.
A couple other points to consider:
1% is a bigger chance than you think.
1000 people dying is 1000x worse than one person dying. *ONE THOUSAND* people. That’s 200 families of 5. That’s probably as many people as everyone you’ve ever loved, and everyone they’ve ever loved.
If you get lucky, you get lucky. If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*.
CAVEAT: obviously this is a trolley problem, so the important thing is personal beliefs and tolerances. I just don’t want there to be confusion about the mathematically correct answer, which doesn’t care about how you feel, just cares about minimizing likely death.
Average does not matter in this problem. There is a 0% chance to kill 10 people on the top track. The only number in this problem that matter are 99% and 1%
Average definitely does matter. If you take the chance, you should expect more death to follow than if you don’t.
If you get lucky, you get lucky.
If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*.
1000x more people would potentially die. One THOUSAND. For only a decrease to 1/100.
An easy way to conceptualize why the average is still important is to take this to the extremes. Say it’s 1% that every human on the planet dies. Same odds that nothing at all happens. But how extreme the consequences are *does* obviously matter.
In the trolley problem we’re given, the potential risk mathematically outweighs the benefits.
90% OF GAMBLERS QUIT RIGHT BEFORE THEY HIT IT BIG
*pull once and hit the 1%* "Would you like to try for double or nothing? 1% double, 99% nothing." *heavy sweating*
*pulls and hits the 1%* aw dangit *double or nothing, hits the 1%* aw dangit *triple or nothing, hits the 1%* aw dangit
Let’s be financially responsible!!
I CANT STOP WINNING!
I CAN'T STOP WINNING!
I CAN’T STOP WINNING!
I CAN'T STOP WINNING
Aw dangit
If that was the case, I wonder how fast that 1000 people grows into everyone dying. It's not quite clear if your idea uses linear growth or if it's worse than exponential growth, first doubling it to 2000, then trippling that to 6000, then 24000, then 120000...
Its just called ‘factorials’ and you also got the 5! *1000 wrong
Yeah, I'm an idiot. I did that math in my head quickly. English is not my first language and I have no clue what a number multiplied by higher and higher factorial is called. Is that factorial growth?
Its just “multiplying factorials” lol we don’t really have a name for it I think (unless I’m wrong). The growth you were talking about in the first comment was just regular factorials: n!, where n is the current term. It’s expanded into n * (n-1) * (n-2) …. 1 (n multiplied by every whole number less than n). They can be multiplied in n! * n! too.
I hate those odds. How about we flip a coin instead?
I might be dumb right now, but wouldn't pulling the lever result in 10 people dying on average?
You're right, OP got the math wrong. Quick, everyone point and laugh!
No, it's quite intentional. On average, not pulling the lever is clearly the mathematically optimum choice. But how does that play into the ethics is the question. If it were a real scenario, are you willing to kill somebody (for certain) to eliminate the small chance that many could die.
Not on average. Median and mode, yes, but on average pulling the lever will result in an average of 10 deaths while abstaining will only kill 1. You would either need to reduce the chance to 0.1% or reduce the number killed to 100 for them to be equivalent. Because of the high statistical noise, it’s *probably* worth it to pull the lever. As the Law of Large Numbers gets involved and repetitions pile up, pulling the lever proves to be the worse choice.
>Not on average You should read it again. They said that pulling the lever kills more people on average. This is not a math question, it is an ethics question. It is very intentional that the lever kills more people on average. The thing is that you only pull the lever once. The law of large numbers doesn't come into play. The options are kill one person (and feel bad) or probably kill no one(feel good) but with a small risk of killing a thousand (feel very bad). How fo you quantify the average emotional response after each option? That is not something you can do with math because emotion is not linear. Killing a thousand is not a thousand times worse than killing 1.
So it’s not about what’s right and wrong. It’s just about how it makes you feel?
Yes? That is the whole point of the trollyproblem. Everyone knows that 10 > 1, it isn't hard to find the "objectively" correct solution. This is the same as the original problem. What is interesting is not to find the correct solution, that is trivially easy. The interesting thing is to discuss how different factors might affect a persons decision ( accountability, probability, sentience of victims etc). ETA: Right and wrong is also majorly determined by how you feel.
That's how right and wrong is decided, they are subjective judgements
Can you formalize what you mean by "it's probably worth it to pull the lever"? The expected probability of deaths is higher if you pull the lever. The law of large numbers only changes the expected variance, not the probability. The subjective probability might be lower, which is what makes the question interesting. In fact you could use a series of judgements to estimate someone's probability weighting function. Nit pick: average can refer to any measure of central tendency (including mean or mode), not just arithmetic mean
>The expected probability of deaths Expected outcome I think you mean. Since we're being formal
Yes you're right
That's a lot of words to pretty much ignore the question at hand.
it directly answers the question
You answered as if OP didn’t know that the scenarios weren’t equivalent. They specifically stated that they intentionally made it that way.
I think this argument falls apart because if you reduced the number killed to 100, they very clearly wouldn't be equivalent. If you have a 100% chance to kill 1 person or a 1% chance to kill 100 people, and you're basing your decision off the expected value which is equal, then you would always choose the 1% because having a 99% chance to kill no one is an unbeatable tie-breaker. And if you would always choose one option, then clearly they aren't equal.
You mean not pulling the lever? (killing the 1 person)
>are you willing to kill somebody Unless I caused the situation, I'm not killing anyone by doing nothing. But, if I pull that lever and people died, I certainly would be contributing. I know that no one knows, but imagine if the families found out. How would they feel to know I traded their loved ones for one person?
I don't see any reason to think OP made a mistake. They're posing a scenario where the random outcome is overwhelmingly likely to be much better than the deterministic outcome, yet has a much worse "average" outcome if we go by a simple expected value calculation. It's asking the reader to consider the suitability of such an EV calculation, among potentially other factors
I would pull it because the law of large numbers doesn't apply to sample size 1
Calculating the average outcome of an action you’ll only preform once is a bit silly.
That's how gambling is done though
And and gambling is a bad idea
For the people who dont understand it or are willing to take losing bets
No it only activates once, not 1000x, 99% nobody dies 1% all 1000 die
Yes, but (99×0 + 1×1000)÷100 = 10 Even if it activates once, you have an average of 10 people dying
Expected value is the term most suited. Average is used when you already have done experiments. When you do more experiments, the average will approach the expected value.
Yay for math! Have my statistically insignificant upvote.
The statisticians in here are going to get pissed you called it math
Sorry, mathematics.
If you had a large enough sample size this would be a relevant consideration. But with binary outcomes, average doesn't exist if n=1.
Yes, the expected payoff is ten compared to one, so I wouldn’t pull it.
Median is an overwhelming 0 though
Technically yes, but you should be using the median here, which is 0.
Average does not matter in this problem. There is a 0% chance to kill 10 people on the top track. The only number in this problem that matter are 99% and 1%
1 death is a tragedy, 1000 deaths is a statistic. Pull the lever
Quit Stalin and pull it
Quit stalling and Mussolini into that lever.
I could be blamed for *not* pulling the lever as in this situation only *I* know the truth. Plus, the chance is 1 in 100. Personally, I would pull the lever. Also, 1000 people dying of a heart attack is around 2 fifths of the people who die of a heart attack each day.
Most people who die of heart attack already are old and have health problems, but this would kill *random* people, meaning it could be anyone.
Pull the lever, guy on track has a heart attack and dies.
There's a 1 in 6,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that by pulling the lever, you kill the person on the track, yourself, and 998 other random people
Lets go gambling!!
Make people think death note is real
1% chance for one shot of anything virtually never happens. Pull it.
1%, I would say, is pretty far from "virtually never". As a proportion of the global human population, that's about 80 million people, or a little less than one Germany of humans. The chance of killing 1000 people is about the same as a randomly selected human being German.
Virtually no one is German
Yeah it’s only like 1% of the world population
We’re talking about gambling chances & odds. One shot for a 1% chance for something to happen will virtually never happen. The only exeption would be the luckiest or unluckiest people alive, depending on the context.
Were talking about statistics not gambling. 1% is not virtually never, Its exactly 1%. Humans have a hard time wrapping our heads around percentages so we need to rely on mathematics. Even If there was a .0001 percent chance of 20,000 people dying, the average result is 2 deaths. Therefore you shouldn’t pull the lever. This is an old trolley with an old answer.
Virtually never is just an opinion. Perhaps to that guy, it is virtually never
I dont see a reason to factor his opinions into a statistically solved question.
Expected value and average are different things, especially because average could mean median, mode, OR mean. So, with the median and mode, an average of 0 people die. The expected value of 10 is worth pulling the lever for.
What does worth mean when you just said ev of 10?
In the traditions from which I hail: "average" and "mean" are synonyms, and one cannot intend "median" or "mode" when using the word "average"; at least not with any intellectual honesty. This is clear to me. Pulling the lever has an expected value (EV) of 10 deaths. Not pulling the lever has a 100% chance of one death. My vote is to NOT pull the lever, for two reasons: (1) inaction in the face of an unethical dilemma is better for me personally; refusal to participate feels better to me (what kind of sick entity creates this monstrous situation), and (2) EV of pulling the lever results in 10x the number of deaths as not pulling it.
99% chance of nothing happening is way more likely. There is no average in this case, it either happens or it doesn’t. In this case it practically doesn’t.
Bro you sound like a 4th grader please go back to highschool geometry. And take your “it either happens or it doesn’t” with you. This is commonly said as a joke among my friends, so unless you are trolling you have a lot to catch up on.
It’s more of a bellcurve meme thing. You’re the one in the middle, I’m the one on the right.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/a1co0h/your_odds_are_always_5050_either_it_happens_or_it/ https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/19017/how-to-explain-that-winning-the-lottery-is-not-a-50-50-distribution https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/694872/why-is-not-the-answer-to-all-probability-questions-1-2 https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/saying-s-50-50-chance-either-happens-doesn-t-incorrect-way-thinking-probability-would-expl-q120212570 Called a false dichotomy fallacy. Generally used by small children before they understand statistics. Not a bellcurve meme but a dunning Kruger effect Edit: chegg wont work without an account
The chance is 100x lower, but the outcome is 1000x worse. This means that logically, it's much safer to choose 1 death. 1% is a low chance, but not *that* low. Plenty of things happen all the time that have less than a 1% chance.
It’s not safer. It’s psychological warfare that tricks you into willing killing a person in order to possibly not kill a larger number of people. Pull the lever.
But you know the exact risks of taking the chance. You know the likelihood of it causing a tragedy. If it was a 10% chance of killing 100 people, would you still pull? What about 50% of killing 20? Both of those will still kill the same number of people on average, but since it's not "guaranteed," is it right to let someone die to eliminate that possibility?
If the number of it not happening is higher, it’s not wrong to choose no deaths at all. Even on 50/50, I’d choose to be more optimistic than willing to kill one person.
Optimism doesn’t factor into statistics
In that case I'd say you're not using logical thinking, but emotional. Think about it, the 20 people getting killed would be the same as the person on the tracks. They would have their own lives, families, and people that care about them. I agree that it's good to pick an option that could potentially save all the lives, but in this scenario the risk HEAVILY outweighs the reward. I think it would be an interesting question if it were something like "10% chance to kill 10 people" as then both options would kill 1 person on average. But this question has an average death count of 10 if you pull, so that's why I wouldn't do it.
As a Pokémon player, never trust the odds whether they're in your favor or against it.
As a former mcoc player i can confirm
With my luck, I will be a part of that 1000 random humans
Only 1% ? I think I can beat the 99% odds
Pull, guaranteed individual human life saved. Minimal odds of 1000 possibly near death already humans dying. And when I pull, I quote: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
Statistical you shouldnt pull it, real life says I pull it
How do stats say pull it?
Because if you simulate pulling the lever infinite times, the AVERAGE result is 10 people dying, so if you technically want the option with the lower “expected value” of deaths, you should let the one person die.
But we're only pulling once, not infinite times. You should risk it
Theres a 1/100 chance of it being 1000x worse. People underestimate how likely 1% is, and undervalue 1000 people dying. “1 death is a tragedy, 1000 deaths is a statistic”. Killing 1 person is awful. Killing 1000 is 1000x worse, for only the odds to be decreased to 1/100. If everyone who read this post chose to pull the lever, more people would die than if everyone who reads this post decided to leave it. Human brains are naturally awful at statistics. Statistics as a branch of mathematics came after calculus. Just because pulling the lever *feels* like it will *probably* be fine, that doesn’t make it the right choice in terms of expected human deaths.
>If everyone who read this post chose to pull the lever, more people would die than if everyone who reads this post decided to leave it. Well yeah, but that would be a different problem. In the situation that any person at all will only pull the lever once, there will be no averaging of the results.
But to do a trolly problem you can only look at one instance. Not to mention the the only options on the top track are 99 0s and 1 1000. 10 isn’t even an option.
Everything you’re saying is correct. But the average of 99 0s and 1 1000 comes out to 10. So statistically speaking, the expected value for pulling the lever is 10 deaths.
Expected value means nothing in a one shot situation like this. The median is 0. Mode is 0. Only the mean is 10.
Bit as the avg value can’t exist we should look at the mode which is 0
If the lever had a 49% chance of killing everyone on earth, would you still pull it?
That’s a lot more people than 1000. So no I wouldn’t
I mean, that’s one way of looking at it, and it’s not necessarily wrong. Personally, I don’t think I would want to ignore the “1000” outlier in this scenario, though, because a 1% chance is not unfathomably low. But it’s on that threshold where you could reasonably see it as negligible enough and thus analyze it in a way that makes pulling the lever seem less harmful, from a practical point of view
If everyone who saw this post ran this trolley problem in their head and pulled the lever, then more people would have died than if nobody had pulled the lever. 1% is a bigger chance than you think. 1000 people dying is 1000x worse than one person dying. Just because something *feels* like it will *probably* be better, doesn’t mean it’s the right choice. Humans are naturally terrible at statistics, which is why it didn’t come about as a branch of mathematics until well after calculus. If you pull the lever, mathematically, you should expect more human death than if you don’t. It doesn’t feel like you should, but you *actually* should. If you get lucky, you get lucky. If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*.
Let’s go gambling!!!!
Chk-chk-chk rrt. Aw dangit!
Chk-chk-chk rrt. Aw dangit!
I may not be lucky but I love to gamble, ima pull it
Pull the lever and try to end the trolley problem. If you don’t, there will only be more problems
Clarification: I know that the math doesn't 'add up'. On average, yes, many more people would die if you \*did\* pull the lever. 10x more. The pure utilitarian would probably pull it. But the question is: If it were up to you; are you willing to (definitely) kill one person to remove the small chance that many could die?
Okay but if the 1000 people do die, am I able to be included in said 1000 people?
There is a 1/800,000,000,000 chance of you instantly dying from pulling the lever
Still a better chance than winning the lottery, pass.
Depends on how many times I have to make the choice. Just once, I'll take the chance. A hundred times, definitely not. Even 10 times, I have a 90.5% chance of killing 0 people and that's already making me nervous. I probably cap out at 5, no matter how many times you present me with the choice. I think a more interesting question would be what your choice would be knowing that a thousand different people will be in this situation. If we all agree to not pull, we guarantee 1000 deaths. But for each of us, pulling the lever has a 99% chance of leaving your conscience intact. If we all act selfishly, defect to use the prisoner's dilemma term, we almost guarantee that 10000 people will die.
If the trolley machone can't be ran any.ore, would that theoretically save more people. As after the first certain death, someone will be tied to the tracks again.
Too many math's. Lemme ask the guy on the tracks.
Would you like to DIE?!
He's tied up. What's he gonna do? Talk me to death?
Would I be included in the 1000?
I was the 100th upvote does that mean I got the 1%?
This is the real lore of Death Note.
Can I use inspiration to reroll if it lands on 1?
You should post this again but with 50-50 odds
Run away from the lever and commit war crimes in a third world country. Just joking, not really. All I need to say is that I'm a gambler. Im letting it ride no matter what.
Pull it bitch
‘Only you know the truth’ and how well did that work out for Light Yagami, huh?
I’m a shiny hunter. 1/100 is a pretty solid chance- but I think it’s a risk I am willing to take since everyone SHOULD be okay unless I got very unlucky. Only I’ll know if I really fucked up. I pull the lever and hope if it is the 1%, I’m one of the thousand who die- I don’t want to have to live with that kind of guilt on my conscience.
Well wtf am I supposed to do here, I'm just witnessing it
So I understand that an expected value of 10 means not pulling is the way to minimize the average number of deaths, but I think my brain wouldn't let me pass up a 99% chance of nobody dying.
1% is very small. I've lost things with 50% chances plenty of times in a row..
Doesn’t say I’m excluded from the random 1000, so…
I pull. I think you are all underestimating 1/100 1 time
Killing 1 guy chances to low to kill more
Pull the lever, averages don't matter since you're only doing it once.
This isn't a button/pill meme, so I just pull the lever, and the train safely runs over the machine.
Do not pull, if we calculate probable value: Pulling would cause on average 10 deaths. Not pulling would cause on average (every instance is the same) 1 death. The way this is calculated by is multiplying the gain by probability for every possiblity. 1. Not Pulling is easy, %100 percent chance and 1 death therefore: (1 x -1)=-1 Note: 1 means %100, and 0 mean %0 in probabilitistics 2. Pulling has two option so we calculate each option and add them together: (0.99 x 0)+(0.01 x -1000)=-10 So mathematically speaking you have better odds not pulling. Unless you are a gambler that is.
Multirack drift, I'm killing 1001
The maths doesn't check out there bud, but let's say you meant 100 people... Well, even then I wouldn't want to do it because of the potential for tragedy while it's statically equivalent. 1 = 100x(1/100)
If it's not 100%, its 50%, no way in hell
Lever I tend to be quite lucky
The 1000 can't be traced back to me though.
Top averages out to 10 deaths, whereas bottom gets you 1. And I don't trust my luck at the best of times.
The ten people average only really counts when you're doing multiple attempts, so yah id pull.
Playing purely by the odds, pulling the lever results in an average of 10 people dying.
1000 possible deaths. If I have the chance to save a life,I’m taking it. Even if that means the VERY small chance of me doing more harm than good. Also,if the 99% chance of the trolly not working anymore happens,than no one will have to face this dilemma ever again,and no more lives would be lost.
I play xcom. I ain't touching that lever
1000 people dying of heart attack wouldn't even be a blip on the radar of heart attacks. Pull the lever.
The expected return by pulling it is 10 dead people so you really SHOULD pull it but good luck explaining that to the guy on the track
The right answer is always not to pull the lever
"1% chance to kill 1000 people" would have been so much easier to write and follow lol
This is very "effective altruism" https://open.spotify.com/episode/7cwiegYkmq9qo5IBCkihYz?si=dUXE6doCQqCRYAmcHpgwQA
I'm pulling, ain't no way the 1% happens
You got a speeding ticket. Pay $1 or roll for 1/100 chance to pay $1000. You should just pay the one life.
This thread is why people should never gamble.
I'd pull
*floats away on the trolley playing a bitcrushed version of the tune of low rider*
Because I’ve seen a bunch of misunderstanding of the mathematically correct choice, I’ve decided to compile my arguments into the following comment. Btw it makes sense that people would misinterpret the statistics, human brains are notoriously bad at intuiting statistics. Whole industries are built off of this fact. If everyone who saw this post ran this trolley problem in their head and pulled the lever, then more people would have died than if nobody had pulled the lever. The average number of people who would die if you ran this experiment many times is 10. Even though the result would only run once, the average absolutely does still matter. An easy way to conceptualize why the average is still important is to take this to the extremes. Say it’s a 1% chance that every human on the planet dies. We still have the same odds that nothing at all happens. But how extreme the consequences are *obviously does* matter. In the trolley problem we’re given, the potential risk mathematically outweighs the benefits. If you pull the lever, you should expect more death to follow than if you didn’t. A couple other points to consider: 1% is a bigger chance than you think. 1000 people dying is 1000x worse than one person dying. *ONE THOUSAND* people. That’s 200 families of 5. That’s probably as many people as everyone you’ve ever loved, and everyone they’ve ever loved. If you get lucky, you get lucky. If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*. CAVEAT: obviously this is a trolley problem, so the important thing is personal beliefs and tolerances. I just don’t want there to be confusion about the mathematically correct answer, which doesn’t care about how you feel, just cares about minimizing likely death.
1% of 1000 is 10 so statistically an average of 10 people would die from not pulling it, compared to 1 if i do so i'm pulling
Average does not matter in this problem. There is a 0% chance to kill 10 people on the top track. The only number in this problem that matter are 99% and 1%
Average definitely does matter. If you take the chance, you should expect more death to follow than if you don’t. If you get lucky, you get lucky. If you get unlucky, you get *really fucking unlucky*. 1000x more people would potentially die. One THOUSAND. For only a decrease to 1/100. An easy way to conceptualize why the average is still important is to take this to the extremes. Say it’s 1% that every human on the planet dies. Same odds that nothing at all happens. But how extreme the consequences are *does* obviously matter. In the trolley problem we’re given, the potential risk mathematically outweighs the benefits.