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Most people would fail to understand the question. So many will flip the switch a bunch of times randomly. In other words: This would be super frustrating for the villain.
I love the idea of the villain explaining the whole thing to the captive and at the end being like, “okay, I’m about to put the blindfold and noise canceling headphones on, so this is the last chance for any other questions about how this works”
Noise cancelling earphones sucks at blocking voices. Just yell and ask if there are others.
There surely must’ve been a more comprehending way to phrase the dilemma.
Half the fun of trolley problems is adapting them to puzzles for which they are utterly unsuitable:
Info: How many people live in the kingdom?
There’s a five in six chance you are picked 1 out of X, and a one in six chance you are 10 out of X.
If you’ve been picked, there are three possible outcomes.
Flipping the lever kills you. 5/6 x 1/X
Flilling the lever saves you and 9 other people. 1/6 x 1/X
Flipping the lever does nothing at all. 1/6 x 9/X
From a purely statistical standpoint, you’re five times more likely to die flipping the lever, but the expected value, measured in lives saved, for flipping the lever is twice as high as not.
From a purely altruistic measure, you should always flip the lever, because at worst you kill yourself, at best you save 10 people, and you can do it with significant confidence that it doesn’t actually matter.
But back to my original question, 5/6X vs 1/6X vs 9/6X where as X approaches infinity, the difference becomes negligible.
