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We all may have heard of the trolley problem. If you don't, let me give a short explanation.
To put it simply, the trolley problem is like a test of the human mind and how it reacts to rapid- events. The problem goes like this; imagine yourself on a train track. You see a train approaching 5 people, who are tied to a rope and will surely die if the train hits them. However, there is another track where the is just 1 person, who will also die if the train hits him. You can divert the track using a lever to hit 1 person and save 5, or you could do nothing and let the train kill off 5 people to save 1.
Most people would immediately press the lever and kill one person to save five, and while that is true, some people have different opinions based on their own logical thinking. You kill do nothing and kill off five so you couldn't be involved in the incident, so police suspect nothing. Or, maybe you would kill the five people to save one person in the name of solving overpopulation. The strange thing about this problem is that this problem has been adapted into many different settings and scenarios where each time it is changed the answers become completely different. One popular example is:
Imagine you're a doctor. You have five patients who each of them are missing separate different organs, and will most probably die. Now, you have one healthy patient who has all the organs required to save the five people. So, do you take out the organs of the one person to save five?
Suddenly, most people decide not to forcefully abduct the poor guy and save five people. This is strange, because the trolley problem and the doctors problem are quite literally the same, the only difference being the setting and scenario, so why are the answers suddenly different all of a sudden?
Many people have many different answers regarding this, but however, in my opinion, the reason is because of this: In the main trolley problem, the people tied to the tracks are tied forcibly not in their own will, so they had death coming to them anyway and doesn't matter. Their situations were equal, making the desicion easier, but, in the doctors problem, the one healthy guy did not have death coming, and unless he willingly volunteered to give up his organs, sacrificing the one guy would be morally wrong. The situations and scenarios are different, the there is an imbalance of morality in the second one.
In short, the trolley problem is only a problem if you think saving more people is better than saving fewer people.
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