Among the many lessons “The Good Place” tried to teach us, along with how to be “good” and what we owe to each other, was how to make a difficult decision when there is really no good choice. The ...

There is an old thought experiment called the Trolley Problem that’s become central to the development of autonomous cars. In the context of self-driving cars, it sets up a scenario where an ...

Trebz/Wikimedia Commons The trolley is coming, tra la tra la. When I first heard about the trolley problem a few weeks ago on the radio, I must have missed a few details. The subjects in a research ...

Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Design by Emily Schwartz. Throughout my college career, I have toggled back and forth between ...

Picture the following situation: You are taking a freshman-level philosophy class in college, and your professor has just asked you to imagine a runaway trolley barreling down a track toward a group ...

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Should the driver of a crashing car be allowed to swerve into your lane and kill you, if she calculates that doing so would save her life? What if she'd die, too, but would save the lives of a ...

I imagine you’re all familiar with the concept of the Trolley Problem. You know the ethics-minefield thought experiment, right? A trolley barrels down railway tracks, hurtling towards five people. You ...

It seems every year I must write about the highly distracting "trolley problem" question for robocars, where people wonder how software will "decide who to kill" when a car faces an unavoidable ...

Pity prime minister Boris Johnson. He loves to be liked – but he exists in a timeline that does not allow for popular politicians. For the past eight weeks, the whole country has stayed home to save ...