this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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I'd pull the lever to kill one person immediately. Assuming the decision maker at each stage is a different person with different opinions on moral, ethical, religious, and logical questions, then it's a near certainty that someone is going to pull the lever to kill the people at their stage. If you're lucky, it's the very next guy. If you're not, it's the guy killing a million people a couple of iterations later. If I'm the first guy, I'll take the moral hit to save the larger number of people.
I agree with your logic, so far as it goes. However, there are, currently, just over eight billion humans in existence. If my quick, over-tired math is correct, that means only 34 people have to say no, until we run out of people to tie to the tracks. Assuming, at that point, the system collapses and nobody dies, I'd guess 34 people would refuse - might be the better choice.
Would you trust the entirety of human existence to be decided by 34 people? In my experience from watching reality TV, the last one always screws the rest over for their own benefit.
Imagine being the last one. You could singlehandedly wipe out half the global population. This would normally be a bad thing, and it is, but it would also make every surviver twice as rich, solve food scarcity and halve the pollution, perhaps even saving humanity from itself.
If that's not enough, think about everyone now having double the amount of kittens and half the traffic on the roads.
Society and the economy are not a zero sum game. Killing half the population wouldn't make the survivors twice as rich. It would send society into chaos which would make the remaining people's lives far worse.