The Trolley Problem — Would You Pull the Lever?
A runaway trolley is heading toward five people tied to the tracks. You stand beside a lever that diverts it — but the alternate track holds one person. Pull the lever and you actively cause one death to prevent five. Do nothing and five die without your hand on the switch. This thought experiment has shaped moral philosophy for decades: it forces a choice between maximising the number of lives saved and the absolute constraint against causing harm directly.
Vote on this dilemma
A runaway trolley is heading toward 5 people. You can pull a lever to divert it — but it will kill 1 person instead.
1 votes cast
Research background
Philosophers have used the trolley problem for decades to explore whether it is morally different to cause harm directly rather than allow harm to happen. SplitVote turns that classic tension into a live voting question.
- Moral Dilemmas — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Doing vs. Allowing Harm — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
SplitVote is for entertainment and aggregate insight, not a scientific test.
Related dilemmas
You are a doctor. One healthy patient's organs could save the lives of 5 people dying in the next room. No one would ever know.
You can go back in time and kill one person as a baby — preventing a genocide that kills 10 million people. The baby is innocent.
A lifeboat holds 8 people maximum. There are 9 survivors. Someone must go overboard or everyone drowns.
A plane is going down. There are 6 survivors but only 4 parachutes. You have one. Do you give yours up or keep it?
Related topics
No account required. Your vote is anonymous.