The Paradox of the Trolley Problem

The Trolley Problem presents a moral dilemma where a trolley is heading towards five people on a track. You can flip a switch to divert it onto another track, risking one person’s life instead. The paradox highlights conflicting moral intuitions: is actively causing harm (by switching) worse than passively allowing harm to happen? It questions whether saving more lives justifies deliberate action that leads to harm, revealing complexities in ethical decision-making. It’s a way to explore how we weigh moral principles like saving lives versus avoiding direct harm.