hmmmm

I take the square root of the negative trolley, then use my imaginary streetcar to establish a complex track so I can start killing in an additional dimension.

It's always better to gain a full understanding of the system when trying to make important decisions.

The trolley has two sets of wheels, leading and trailing, both of which must remain on the same set of tracks.

The switch is designed to enable the trolley to change course, moving from one set of tracks to the other.

Throwing the switch after the leading set has passed, but before the trailing set has reached the switch points will cause the two sets to attempt travel on separate tracks. The trolley will derail, rapidly coming to a halt. If the trolley is moving slowly enough to permit this action, nobody dies.

Source: former brakeman (one of the people responsible for throwing switches), section hand (one of the people responsible for installing switches), and railroad welder (one of the people responsible for field repairs of switches).

I would question the ability to line people up on a railroad track such that they have a 1:1 correspondence with the real numbers.

Has anyone tried just asking the trolley to stop?

At any point in time, a finite amount of time has passed, and the trolley has killed a finite amount of people. The correct track is the one that, at any given time, will have killed fewer people. Unless the trolley speeds up to account for that and always kills n people per second, the top track will result in less deaths over any period of time.

Assuming that it takes some amount of energy to kill one person, and that the trolley doesn't have an engine with infinite power, choosing the bottom track would save lives. The trolley would have to expend an infinite amount of energy to move any distance from the starting point, so it would just get stuck there while trying to crush the unimaginable amount of people bunched up in front of it.

Pulling the lever will kill people slower, therefore less deaths in the lifetime of the universe.

Move to the end of the track and undo the constraints of people on the track. You will have infinite time until the trolly reaches the end, and can thusly save infinite lives by doing so.

Pull the lever, thus killing -1/12th people.

That trolleys going to derail eventually. So the one with more people since they are tightly packed and it can't build momentum.

I come to an agreement with the person who has tied these people to the tracks to untie every 2nd person. I save an infinite number of people!

Shit man if there's an infinite amount of people there must also be an infinite amount of track. So forget philosophy, I'm getting rich!

Do nothing, since an infinite number of people implies an inconceivable population overgrowth, so the best possible good for humanity is to cull the population.

Heck, you could probably go out and genocide the rest of the population that isn't tied to the track and still not suffer any real loss. Then, you face the last true enemy: the bloodsoaked beast responsible for the deaths of untold billions- yourself.

Once you've slain that last creature, all of humanity that still remains will be those tied to the railroad track. The only living people will spend their entire lives knowing nothing but the track and the trolley, and the imposing fear that one day, they, too, shall be crushed under its wheels like those before them.

The only life remaining for the human race is now one of terror and eventual slaughter. There are no good outcomes to this conundrum. There are only the uncaring wheels of the trolley.

I kill the trolley driver. The Dead Man button makes that the trolley stops.

The top track can be assumed to be of infinite length, but for the bottom track this is not enough - to fit ℵ people on it, they'll have to be infinitely compressed. And since they are compressed - they are already dead. I'm not pulling the lever - preventing the (farther) desecration of corpses does not merit killing people who are still alive.

If you let the train go, it would appear to stop immediately at the first person (assuming it has any reaction whatsoever to hitting a person) as there are infinitely real numbers between any two real numbers you could come up with.

Seeing an infinite number of people lying there I deduce that I must be in some kind of thought experiment and let the trolley roll on while I look for a way to escape back to reality.

Everybody dies, no matter what choice you make. It's just a matter of time.

As an Engineer with a Physics background I say the most ethical choice is the real numbers side as the tram, having no room to accelerate between victims, will quickly stop, whilst it's more likely it can keep going for ever on the integer branch of the line.

A more effective vehicle for this would be a tank or maybe a steamroller.

(Note to self: keep this in mind if I ever become an Evil Overlord and need to execute large numbers of people in a gruesome manner)

People die faster if you do nothing, so doing nothing seems like the obvious choice

Reminds me of this: https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/

what do you do?

I replace the lever with a quantum switch so it can be a superppsition and kill everyone twice be ause they deserve it I mean look at that massive line of people there is no way they didn't know what was going on before egtting added to the tracks no species thos dumb deserves to escape the trolly my god how did they all get there -continues ranting as trolly aproaches-

PAUSE

And this makes about as much sense as the original question so no educating me!

resumes ranting

That trolley is definitely stopping before it makes it through all those people on the bottom track.

Multi-track drifting, baby. Double infinite.

I'm just waiting for the black hole to form just from the mass of the infinite people between 0-1 on the Reals track.

Did nobody have math class? The pictures are always misleading!

It never actually specifies the density the people are packed onto the track, the image implies an answer.

I'd argue that the densities should be considered to be equal, regardless of whatever that density value may be. We do not need to solve for the exact value to discuss the problem at hand!

Would suck being the last person on either track. It'd be a long and boring wait while tied up

Jump in front of the trolley, someone else's problem

This comment section is politics in action! :-P

Invent a new number system that provides aneven smaller infinity

I know many people despise generative AI, but what do you think of this result from Copilot? I am bad at maths so I wonder if you experts can tell.

In your scenario, you have two sets: the integers on the top track and the real numbers on the bottom track. The cardinality of the integers is equal to the cardinality of the real numbers, which is called the continuum hypothesis. Therefore, it seems intuitively more ethical to pull the lever and divert the trolley to the bottom track, where you kill fewer people in any finite time.

I get that the answer is supposed to be "it doesn't matter" but if you take time into account, it actually fucking does, and also makes it hugely obvious what the actual answer is.

Pull the lever. Save as many lives as you can and hope that someone that now wasn't killed as fast can help come up with a solution for the runaway trolley.

i'd ask for a second train.

If we have infinite people, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to lose a couple.

I am sure even countably infinite people would violate some law of thermodynamics.

I pull the lever and invoke Zeno's paradox to ensure the trolley's position remains < 1 for eternity.

Some infinities are bigger than others but those are both the same sized infinity, ℵ₀. Same if you multi-track drift.

Edit: I didn't read it closely enough, it says "one person for every real number". Which is indeed a larger infinity. However I don't think you can diagram that, the diagram is showing a countable infinity of people on the lower track.

Killing one person for each real number, the train will be killing an uncountably infinite quantity of people in any given finite time slice.

Infinity people always die. Even if you don't make a decision.

EDIT: I rolled a critical fail in reading comprehension and I thought the other track was N per integer instead of 1 per real number in the previous version of this comment.

The people in the real number track are already dead by the time the trolley arrives due to the forces involved in cramming them so tightly together. I.e. they are basically just a gore pile the moment after the people are somehow arranged like that.

I pick the real number track so that no one new has to die.

I'll do nothing. Either way those people will eventually die - because of the train or because of starvation and dehydration. I would prefer the train.

If the tracks are scaled to the same unit (presumably one where one human width equals an infinitely small number), everyone in the top track would die of exposure before the trolley even reaches its first victim due to there being infinite distance between integer milestones, whereas everyone in the bottom track would be killed instantly due to any distance traveled having an infinite number of infinitesimals*. So I choose the bottom track to be merciful.

If the tracks don't share the same scale then we don't have enough information to make a judgment.

Even though we already established the one human width rule. Could someone check my logic here? Infinities break my brain.

I actually would like to choose the track where the number of people increases by one (so 1, 2, 3, 4...) and then the train will kill -1/12 people

PS Yes, I know this sum result is problematic, it's only a joke

Pull it -1/12 of the way, causing the infinity to converge to a real number.

build new tracks to make the trolley run on (possibly in circles).

I quickly carry the people to the other side so they all can get run over.

Slip the switch, like always

The same thing most people would do when presented with a Trolly Problem for real. Analysis paralysis, choose to do nothing, then cry softly every night for the rest of my life.

Do nothing - maximum destruction

Since there's an infinite number of people to kill in either case I can just do nothing, and thus by inaction most of those infinite people will have more than enough time for someone else to rescue them. Maybe the State, that's what they're there for.

I have a tangential question I have been wanted an explanation for:

If there are infinite universes, would there be infinite earth's?

I remember (an) answer is infinite universes doesn't necessarily mean infinite earth's. A cool analogy of a CD rack was used when I read it, but I can't find it. Does anyone else have an explanation and/or analogy for this?