The root of my frustration with a lot of trolley problem discourse is that 'What does it mean to act ethically in a world where shitty luck and the actions of strangers you'll never meet have left you without any purely good options?' is, like, possibly one of the most relevant and universally applicable questions moral philosophy might help answer.
Saying it's a bad question because it's the negligent trolley engineer's fault literally exactly misses the point - yes how to deal on a personal level with systems and infrastructure that designed without much care for human collateral damage is an incredibly useful thing to think about!
i'm surprised i've never seen anyone say that, because they didn't design the system, therefore nothing they choose to do is their fault and isn't a moral statement.
the whole point is that it's simple. simplistic. and yet we can't find an answer to even the simplest question. people keep changing it to make themselves feel better about it. it's common that people won't even engage with it, as if denying it is a solution. i guess that is a form of "this isn't my fault or my problem". if you act, you "take responsibility" for it all.
are you responsible? how much? does changing the parameters from a lever to shoving matter, and why? does it matter if you designed the system or not? why does it matter who the people are or how they got there?
life isn't fair and people don't like confronting that. there MUST be an out that leaves you unambiguously the good person. that's the just world fallacy: if only you can figure out how things work, nothing bad will ever happen to you, nothing bad will ever happen to anyone again, you'll never do anything bad again. you'll never deserve to be on the tracks, you'll never be forced onto them.
except that's a childish fantasy and life isn't fair. all you can do is try to make it more fair, which is the whole point of the question: what does that mean? why does bitching about it matter, when all that does is put moral paint over it to deny responsibility and thus consequences? why are there consequences when all you did was try to help? why is your trying to help nitpicked as if you designed the circumstances?
The trolley problem is the ethical equivalent of physics questions that start with "ignoring friction..." because they're teaching you a Newtonian formula. Throwing the textbook across the room and declaring "Aha! The rolling ball would experience friction, actually!" does not make you look good at physics. It makes you look like a idiot with so little understanding of the basic concept of the question that you're not worth talking to about physics.
