Can the last person sue me for stopping the train if they become injured?
Not if the injury makes them comatose.
You didn’t save my life You ruined my death!
I pause to wonder the manufacture of the trolley, seeing as it should have derailed by now, causing an end to the death. Yet, it continues its eternal murderous journey.
Rack-and-pinion? Might clog though
The whole 0% thing works best if you aren’t aware of how far the train has already gone.
So you can’t weigh any past quantity dead on any theoretical 0% future
If I let the trolley go indefinitely, will it eventually kill the infinite amount of people?
No, it just keeps going indefinitely.
It’s rolling through Hilbert’s Hotel
“Effective” “altruism” be like
The obvious response is to stop the trolley. Regardless of the percentage, people will continue to die if you don’t. The perspective doesn’t matter, the fact is there are people ahead who are alive.
This right here is what it boils down to when someone responds to a wrongful killing by police with a questionable statistic about how it’s only a tiny fraction of interactions that end that way.
deaths per time
what if the number of people on the tracks is “infinite in both directions”? eg the trolley “starts at” -∞?
Also Think of the consequences of suddenly adding infinite people to the population
yeah that may cause a few problems. there would also need to be an infinite amount of trolley track which may pose some infrastructure challenges
Can I make it accelerate forever?
Also, that is a LOT of pants!