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CC BY NC SA 4.0 （Unless specified） Trolley Problem and its best answer (トロッコ問題とその最適解) is a short novel written by Mano Haruhiko (間野 ハルヒコ), published on Japanese free novel website Shōsetsuka ni Narō (小説家になろう). A short story based on the famous ethical problem: The Trolley Problem, the novel presented the reader with the perspective of a normal individual, while cleverly illustrated the ethical/unethical nature of human beings.
The Trolley Problem: Original
In case you don’t know what the “Trolley Problem” is, here is the short version of it:
A bystander is standing beside a train switch. The bystander is witnessing a train heading towards its destination non-stop. Ahead on the train’s path (Let’s call it Path A), 5 people are tied up on the train track, not able to move. The bystander has a choice to pull the train switch to pull the train from Path A to Path B. The bystander, however, also notices that on Path B there is another individual on the track. The bystander has two options:
A: Leave the train as it is and let it kill 5 people on the track.
B: Pull the switch and let the train kill 1 people on the other track.
What should the bystander do? What is the best choice? What is the more ethical choice? What is the “right” choice?
The Trolley Problem: Novel
The storyline of the novel is essentially a variant of the trolley problem: The protagonist was frequently visited by a young girl, probably at age of 10. While visibly distressed, the young girl “convinced” the protagonist, a sophomore in university, to not talk to the police about her by threatening the protagonist to accuse him of pedophilia. The protagonist noticed the blood on the young girl’s clothes, eventually the smell of rotten flesh, and while lending his phone to the girl for video games, began to notice the phone start to auto-fill to words like “how long will people die”, etc.
Clearly, something is wrong with the young girl’s surroundings, and yes, something went terribly wrong. The girl’s parents fought before the girl came to the protagonist’s house, during which the father stabbed the mother multiple times before hanged himself. As the protagonist noticed, the mother was incapacitated, but still alive through the first few days the young girl visited him.
Eventually, here are the choices the protagonist faces:
A. Report to the police about the girl’s situation, during which may face the charge of pedophilia, but also probably could save the life of a girl’s mother.
B. Pretend to notice nothing, and take care of the girl until the bodies were found, and report to the police to “be surprised of what has happened.”
The protagonist claimed that there is always a “best answer” to the trolley problem: the answer that brings the best result to the choice maker. The protagonist cares about the girl, and himself. As for the girl’s mother, he hasn’t met her in any other circumstances, so there is less business for him to deal with. What he observes is that human beings are usually not the “bystander” in the trolley problem. Even if there is a clear ethical choice, people tend to choose the ones that benefit themselves the most.
The story ends with the protagonist becoming a middle school teacher. As the protagonist himself claimed, becoming a teacher might lead him to be able to notice the insignificant signs of abnormality around him a bit easier.
Discussion
According to the rational choice theory of social sciences, from a macroeconomic perspective, people always make rational choices. Even though beliefs and emotions are irrational, they could be weighted and contribute to the forming of rational thoughts. In a sense, people always make the best choice for themselves first, then for others. Even if sometimes we choose to help others, it is through our valuation of “ethics” and “traditions”, or through the hope of getting something in return, whether these are praises from our surroundings or tangible things. In short, our understanding of others’ irrationality comes from our lack of understanding of other’s experiences and rationals.
The Trolley Problem tears the fabric of “ethics” of human society apart. What we value as “ethical” is valued exactly as we value the return of “ethics:” if an individual values “ethics” and considers him/herself as “ethical,” then it is more to his/her interests to behave ethically, vice versa. It portrays a dark side of our society, that we care about others because we care about ourselves.
This is not to claim that human beings are irreversibly selfish. Many examples of human-being benevolences even before human societies are formed. Kinship, for example, is one of the best examples, as humans share their resources among close relatives. It is never human’s nature to only work for themselves and themselves alone. In a macro perspective, it is possible to say that human is selfish, but from a micro perspective it is quite different.
Even if we take the more strict take on human selfishness, it is still possible to people to work with each other with enough incentives. Still according to the rational choice theory, in order for people to change their behaviors, the best way would be to give them incentives to do so. This incentive could come from many ways, whether through direct gains like money, credits, or social praises, or through indirect influences like educations, experiences, or even through personal relations. In order for everyone to care about something, policymakers have to give a reason for everybody to “care.”
Credits:
Picture from Wikimedia Commons, use under CC-BY SA-4.0. Access through https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Trolley_Problem.svg/1920px-Trolley_Problem.svg.png