Gandom's AMA

[konsta]

A trolley is racing toward five men who are tied to the track. Unless the trolley is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. You are standing on a footbridge looking down on the unfolding disaster. However, a fat man, a stranger, is standing next to you: if you push him off the bridge, he will topple onto the line and, although he will die, his chunky body will stop the trolley, saving five lives. Would you kill the fat man?

I probably would, yes. I'd rather have one dead person on mu consciousness than knowing I could save 5.

Does this make me a bad person?

Well, morally, willing to kill another human being that does have nothing to do with what's going on and most likely horrored by what he's witnessing just as you, is morally unacceptable and will class you as a Psychopath as this is used as a test along with other tests for Psychopathy in Hare's PCL-R
















All jokes aside, even though the person who wrote this dilemma problem said that it's morally permissable to let the five people die over killing an innocent stranger but a lot of  people gave the answer that you gave anyway. I use this test on people to see their psychological thinking, conscience and personality. From what I understand from your comment, you're being sympathetic towards the 5 people who are tied on the track and you justify of killing the fatman because in numbers wise, you prefer killing 1 person for 5 lives (5>1) however you are risking manslaughter charges and you will be in the mercy of the law.

However by judging your question if it makes you a bad person or not, you will probably not kill the fatman anyway because you're only trying to do what's right according to your conscience but you're being doubtful if whether you're doing the right thing.