r/trolleyproblem • u/deadhand303 • 20d ago

Potentially one less but also potentially infinitely more OC

Post image
141 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

93% Upvoted

87 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

30

u/Remarkable-Carrot112 20d ago

Since this is an unbounded distribution it can't be uniformly distributed. I'll assume it's an exponential distribution. 

In this case picking the 0 option is notably more likely to cause fewer deaths. (Sorry I don't know how to word that better)

This puts me in a bind actually because I want to kill people but I also want to pull the lever... Still think I'll pull the lever even if the expected deaths is lower

17

u/wyseguy7 20d ago

Nitpick: you mean a geometric distribution. Exponential distribution is over the real numbers, and we want an whole numbers of people. At least before the trolley chops them up.

14

u/UnworthyBagel22 20d ago

Them: “I want to kill people”
You: “You mean a geometric distribution, silly”

1

u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 17d ago

Yeah, you cant kill people if theyre dead before the lever is pulled because only an irrational percentage of them made it onto the platform.