@sidereal race condition to the rescue

@sidereal "I don't believe in no-win scenarios."

@sidereal

In case anyone is wondering: yes, this is how train robberies operated in the Old West. Slip the switch after the locomotive passes by, passenger cars are stuck there. They could rob everyone and get away before the locomotive could even stop and reverse back to the passenger cars.

And in case you were also wondering: yes, this tactic is still used by people stealing UPS packages from trains in various American cities today.

@sidereal This all sounds nice in theory. But due to Murphy's Law, attempting to pull this off with this particular make and model of tram wil lead to the tram toppling over, disintegrating violently, crushing and killing all of its passengers as well as killing all the people on the tracks with flying sharp-edged, high-velocity debris.

@sidereal Hahahaaaaa

@sidereal It's unrelated but this post/thread reminds me of a solar punk pal who has traveled through all of Canada & US by jumping atop rail cars & sneaking his way into cars to warm up. He once mounted a small tent & reinforced it atop a ViaRail train. It went from AB to Winnipeg before it was noticed & removed 🤣

He traveled this way to go from protest to protest. He's a younger retired firefighter.

@sidereal But ☝️ :blobcateyes:

@sidereal
yes, but
>"multi track drifting"

edit: lol 30s too late

@sidereal UNLESS...the two tracks are closely spaced together. In wich case you want to derail each bogey.

(I know, I know, only some older trams have bogeys, more modern ones have single wheelsets, but had to make the joke anyway)

@sidereal @andrewfeeney that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

@sidereal 👀 *This* is The Good Place!

@sidereal
It derails and kills the guy slipping the switch 🙄

@sidereal
Ah, yes, dual track train drifts: Kills everyone, but looks sick AF.

@sidereal

"The solution to the trolley problem is a transit worker strike." -- Emily Gorcenski

@sidereal@kolektiva.social This would kill the driver, and you'd still have killed someone. This is assuming a best case scenario where there are no passengers riding on the trolley too, which is very unlikely.

@sidereal

Great solution.

I'd extend this by smashing the system that allows such a dangerous situation to happen 🫤✊

@sidereal or everyone dies

@sidereal When suddenly… Multi-track drifting! Oh wait.

[EDIT: Okay, it was already made three times before, but I didn’t see the reply because the federation’s magic. Well, here is an all-in-one meme, so I leave it]

@sidereal probably kills all people

@sidereal nice!

here's mine:

https://enantiomer.org/blog/trolley-solution/

@sidereal Trolley Problem True Ending

@sidereal unions getting shit done yet again, you love to see it

@sidereal@kolektiva.social Wait, would this actually work? Like, assume the speed is really high, the trolley would still have enough momentum to hit the people, right? And if there were people inside, wouldn't those be hurt by this?

@sidereal I don't know why we are still discussing this. A kid can solve the problem.

@sidereal what if there are like 20 people in the trolley though. what then

@sidereal@kolektiva.social what if the switches are remote operated

@sidereal
I like the solution of "apprehend the person tying people to rail lines".

@sidereal turning the switch halfway you say? 😅

@sidereal More proof that unions work!

@sidereal and they say there's no technical solutions to social problems

@sidereal Counterpoint.

@sidereal You absolute hero! You Kobayashi-Maru'd ethics!

@sidereal

I always advocate for stopping or derailing the trolley

@sidereal That's some high-level, Captain Kirk shit, eyetellyouwhut.

@sidereal@kolektiva.social So the posterboy for ethics issues "with no right answer" is instantly solved with no sacrifices and all it took was to stop being a little intellectual bitch and ask a worker about it.

.... I feel like this here is a surprisingly deep metaphor for a lot of things in our world.

@sidereal Heck, an unsafe halt might help. The people inside have a lot more protection against falling over than people tied to the tracks

@sidereal what if the switch was
1. Hidden
2. Locked
3. Non operational
4. Far away
5. Wrong one
6. Jammed
7. Fake
8. Slow
9. Forgotten
10. Difficult, complex
11. Dual, required two people

@vl

@sidereal
so that it will kill 6 peoples?

@sidereal MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING?!

@sidereal
or this could cause a sick Tokyo drift and kill all six

@sidereal It will spin 90 degrees and kill everyone.

@sidereal THERE IS NO KOBAYASHI MARU

@sidereal But it might kill the switch operator. Interesting.

@sidereal@kolektiva.social this is how you get multi track drifting

@sidereal@kolektiva.social ok James Kirk

@sidereal multi track drifting (initial D song is optional)

@sidereal

Clang Clang Clang went the #trolley pop pop pop went their guts 🎼

@sidereal I love this for real. Not as a joke, but as a general statement of non-compliance with false dichotomies that imply necessary immorality.

@sidereal I hate this in the context of "self-driving".
If your autonomous vehicle has gotten itself into a trolley problem, the underlying system was not operating safely in the first place.

@sidereal Not that's called ...

for all the fatalities

@sidereal 😉

@sidereal That's interesting. Thanks for sharing.

@sidereal this is actually really smart lmao

It says nothing of the school bus that comes at the right moment to ram it off track

@sidereal

@sidereal @boris never thought it this way, that the problem in 'the trolley problem' is 'the trolley'

@sidereal This is a perfect summary of my thoughts whenever a video game forces me to pick a bad ending over another bad ending, and I know a better outcome could logically exist but the game won’t allow it because misery==sophistication of something.

@sidereal multi-track drifting was the solution all along

@sidereal
#meme

@sidereal you kobayashi maru’d the trolley problem

@sidereal yeah, you gotta Kobiyashi Maru that shit

@sidereal but that defeats the fun of the thought experiment.

@sidereal There's more than one way to stop a train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCH-tUmMl7Q
(from the Buster Keaton movie The General, where they ran a full sized train over a burning bridge and filmed it falling into a river)

@sidereal One could also try to figure out who tf is tying people to trolley rails all the time (that's the long term solution).

@sidereal You have to assume a spherical train

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

@sidereal@kolektiva.social And here I was thinking dynamite the trolley. Your idea is better.

@sidereal@kolektiva.social Does it matter which way the points are set to begin with? That is, should you prefer to send the front wheels on the diverging and the back wheels on the straight track, or vice versa, or does it make no difference?

@sidereal

@sidereal Just goes to show that engineers never have moral dilemmas.

@sidereal This thread went nuts with railroad stuff, but the larger idea has not been discussed.

When faced with a seeming "no right answer" situation, go outside the parameters of the situation. Break some rules. If you can't derail the train, jump on and try to use the handbrake if it's moving slow enough. Try to untie someone.

If you fail, at least you attempted to do the right thing. Better than doing nothing because there is no right answer.

@sidereal i don’t think so. it’s a tram and city rail network often uses different rail and wheel profile which doesn’t hold the vehicle as well. tram (or similar) going over changing switch usually leads to completely random outcome from toppling the vehicle to it going off the rail in various direction. this would most likely don’t cause safe stop, rather randomization of who will be hurt or killed

@sidereal Counterpoint:

@sidereal
Butbutbut… the people riding on the trolley…

@sidereal @HollyGoDarkly
Indeed. The flaw is that it assumes perfect certainty of only two options which can never be real, yet it asks you treat it as real and categorises you for it.

The answer to the trolly problem is always the Kirk-Kobayashi Maru.

@sidereal can y'all just stop tying people to the tracks? Please?

@sidereal But that will kill Z people traveling in the troley.. :)

@sidereal
Nah, just take em all out

@sidereal
This belongs to the geometry of tracks and trolley...

a 2ax trolley will derail.
a bogie-car can probably run on both tracks and kill all of them...

@sidereal Trolley flips over, rolling over both sides of the track, killing all people bound to the rails.

👍

@sidereal : Oh gosh, I *really* hate to be that guy, but are we sure of the terminology here? I've always heard this referred to as "splitting the switch".

@sidereal Oops!

@sidereal I'm not convinced.

@sidereal I had some similar idea (although way less practical 😅) when I was a philosophy student and was presented this problem. The answer was : "no. This is a thought experiment, the only two options are the ones I presented".

Sadly, it took me many years to realize the correct answer to that was : "well, stay the fuck out of my head then, my thoughts are mine". Those people die only because we allow an authority figure to dictate what reality looks like to us.

@sidereal I always imagined the train had like 20 people in it

@sidereal@kolektiva.social you can get MULTITRACK DRIFTING too if it goes wrong so all good

@sidereal

@sidereal Yes, a similar solution can be applied to the popular crustacean-warrior snail-dilemma. If you had to choose between worshipping the great warrior snail and the crustacean, what should you choose. Most people would answer "The great Warrior snail", however, there is an even better solution. You can worship the crustacean-snail hybrid instead. It incorporates both gods and not one of them will be left out.

@sidereal There are dozens of ways to solve this in any real life situation. But the kind of people who like to pose a #TrolleyProblem are never happy when you explain those. Because it isn't about saving people to them. They want you to fail because it would justify their own bad decisions and inside the box thinking. #KobayashiMaru

@sidereal Well done on solving this Kobayashi Maru 🤗

@sidereal
Revolutionary

@sidereal
When the Republicans want fascism and the Democrats support genocide.

@sidereal As anybody who has ever played with marklin model trains would know.

@sidereal And if it doesn't stop, everyone is killed so no one benefits - a fair solution 😂