Eleanor Nelsen: Would you sacrifice one person to save five?

Would you sacrifice one person to save five?

Imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks, straight towards five workers. You happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. Here's the problem: that track has a worker on it, too — but just one. What do you do? Do you sacrifice one person to save five? Eleanor Nelsen details the ethical dilemma that is the trolley problem. [Directed Eoin Duffy, narrated by Addison Anderson, sound by David Kamp]. 

The trolley problem pits saving five lives against sacrificing one, exposing deep tensions between logic and gut feeling. While 90% of people approve flipping a switch to save five, only 10% support pushing a man off a bridge—even though the outcomes are the same. Emotional reactions and subtle social factors, like gender and mood, sway our moral decisions. As technology advances, these once-hypothetical questions now guide real choices for self-driving cars and autonomous weapons.