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2³² will get interesting...

⁨449⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/3284c22b-6e93-47d1-b343-abd96af1ee01.jpeg

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Comments

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  • thatradomguy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Is this some kind of IPv6 joke that’s gone over my head?

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  • MTK@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Schrödingers murder: You are both a murder and not a murder. You are not a murderer as you did not choose to kill a person, but as this can not continue forever you are also a murderer since it is quite certain that eventually someone will choose murder.

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  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    2^32^ is roughly four billion. We’ll need one or two more doublings to get every last person alive on the tracks.

    This introduces a new wrinkle in the experiment: all the switch operators are also tied to the track. Somewhere.

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  • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Honestly I would. Like I wouldn’t hesitate to kill patient zero of a world ending disease.

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    • Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But then it isn’t a world ending desease, you just killed somebody

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      • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        If you killed patient 0, then it wasn’t a world ending disease either.

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      • Steve@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The use of a time machine is implied in these situations

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  • blahblahblah@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Do you know any of the people involved?

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    • edinbruh@feddit.it ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      at the 33rd round you do

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      • Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
        [deleted]
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    • NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you are number 32 the chance is 50/50

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      • WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        How do you know blahblahblah only knows one person?

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  • Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Maybe there is nobody tied up after the third split, nobody explicitly stated it continues!

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  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The trolley problem thought experiment does a whole lot of work to define personal responsibility. IRL it’s difficult to be the guy who does the evil thing for a good outcome, and easy to kick the can to the next guy, even while making it worse.

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  • xxd@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think you should pull the lever, even if this ended after the entire human population was on the track and the experiment doesn’t go on infinitely. Hear me out:

    When a person pulls the lever with a chance of 50% and in one case they kill 2 people and in the other case 0, the kind of average outcome is 0.5 * 2 + (1 - 0.5) * 0 = 1. Now let’s consider the last person in the chain of decision-makers. They would have 2^33 people on the tracks, or about the entire human population. To make the expected outcome be exactly one person, they’d have to pull the lever with likelihood x so that x * 2^33 + (1 - x) * 0 = 1 which would lead to x = 1/2^33 or about x≈0.0000000001. So only if the last person directs the train towards the people with less than this tiny chance, the expected outcome is smaller than 1. This chance is incredibly small, and far far smaller than I’d guess the actual percentage is. Think of the percentage of people that are psychopaths, or mass murderers, or maybe even just clumsy. If you evaluate the percentage as someone flipping that switch as anything above 1/2^33, you should therefore flip the switch yourself. You can guarantee that the outcome is ‘only’ one death, whereas the average outcome of just the last person likely exceeds 1 by a huge amount.

    I really wanted to calculate the percentage so that the expected outcome is 1 even if every person in the chain flips the switch with that chance, but wolfram alphas character limit let me down :(

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  • BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sounds like what we have been doing with the environment.

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  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Everyone just doubles it and we’re good

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    • Xenny@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That’s kind of how it feels like living in the modern age to be honest. We’re just doubling it until somebody decides to pull the lever.

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  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You’ll eventually have to include alien life. What a great way to see if aliens exist!

    This is also Thanos wet dream come true. Keep racking up the “pass”!

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  • Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I wouldn’t. The likeliness of the next person choosing to kill even more people decreases fast with each iteration. And, I believe we can find 30 people who aren’t willing to become mass murderers pretty easily, even if they are selected randomly

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    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Except for the fact it goes on infinitely, and somebody will eventually choose to kill

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      • Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Except for the fact that nuh uh. Persons are finite

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  • this@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I would, because the second track potentially scales to infinity, and pulling the lever is the only sure way to minimize the death and suffering.

    Also, if everyone avoids pulling the lever, you technically have an infinite amount of people who will die and an infinite amount of guilty consciences, also an infinite amount of people blaming the last guy for forcing the decision on them, like the most messed up version of the infinity hotel.

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    • kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But once you get to round 33, everyone on earth is tied to the track, so there’s no one to pull the lever. That means that the trolley safely passes by, giving everyone ample time to free themselves. Eventually, the trolley stops due to friction with the track and air, plus brakes if it’s using them, and then we all stop getting tied to tracks.

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    • ShouldIHaveFun@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The trolley will probably stop before you reach infinity luckily

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  • Sibbo@sopuli.xyz ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What happens if you are both to be killed and must flip the switch?

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  • AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I woukd kill the poor guy without hesitation. I am not letting that shit get out of hand.

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    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      How far down the line before you wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger? Everyone here assumes we’re at the start of the line, rather than just getting picked up midway through. Not sure where I’d be able to call that myself though…

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  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    at some point you run of people to man the switch and prevent the trolley from hitting the people?

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    • ChanchoManco@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I would set it up in a way that all the people is tied in the main track, so if there’s no one to flip the switch we all die.

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  • pewpew@feddit.it ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well… If I could double it forever eventually it will run out of people to run over

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    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      We’ll have matrix-style human farms producing people for the tracks.

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  • samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Easy choice. Everyone could just leave right now and nobody would die. If someone actively decides to kill people, that’s not on anyone who chose not to themselves.

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  • Sunschein@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A interesting twist would be that you’re held accountable for the death(s) when you pull the lever. Would you risk life in prison to stop the death toll from doubling?

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    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It would sit well with my conscience that I likely prevented a worse fate for exponentially more people, and prevented another person from having to make a worse choice. Which they themselves would likely only make twice as worse, and so on. I could live with that.

      What I’m not sure of is how I would handle being a deicision-maker N steps down the line. Being the first guy, sure. The 16th? I dunno.

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  • marcos@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    With everybody tied up before the 34th track, who exactly is there to push the lever?

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    • NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
      1. Winnie the Pooh.
      2. Alice
      3. Thanos
      4. The Dude
      5. Waldo
      6. Marry Poppins (believe me she ends it.)
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  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The real ethical question here is, is there only one round of trolleys?

    Because if this is a one and done question, then obviously I go for the one person.

    But if it’s possible at any point somebody comes along and has to run the experiment again after me, then if I leave an infinitely expanding number on one side, all it would take is one sadistic person to wipe out a incalculable amount of life.

    In which case, I take the track with two people. And again, it is a question of repetition whether or not doing it once means that it won’t happen next time or if this will continue with every cycle.

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