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Thursday, May 21, 2020

The trolley problem and the pandemic

A trolley driver must choose between turning a trolley so that it runs over an innocent man attached to a track and allowing the trolley to run over and kill five innocent people. Foot, claimed that it was wrong to kill in the first case, but not wrong in the second.  


There's a sense in which this parallels debates over what policy we should pursue in the face of the pandemic. There are different possible combinations:

Policy A causes the death of more innocents

Policy B fails to prevent the death of more innocents

Policy C causes the death of fewer innocents

Policy D fails to prevent the death of fewer innocents

So when we morally assess competing policies in regard to the pandemic, we have to decide what our priorities are. How do we balance the these four factors? 

2 comments:

  1. Excellent! I haven't thought about the trolley in forever but you're right, that states the current problem perfectly.

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