This will come as a surprise to few. 😉

Today’s This American Life had an amazing story, actually excerpted from a longer piece on the amazing NPR program Radio Lab. The article dealt with an old thought experiment about morality generally known as the “Trolley Problem”. Basically it goes like this:

You are standing by a railroad track where you can see a group of five men working. A trolley is rapidly approaching, but the workers are facing the wrong way and do not notice the trolley. You cannot warn or contact the men in any way, but you could pull a lever that will divert the trolley to another track where a single man is working. The five will be saved if you use the lever to kill the one. Do you do it?

Almost universally the answer to this question is “yes”. But then another factor is added:

You are standing on a bridge above a railroad track where you can see a group of five men working. A trolley is rapidly approaching, but the workers are facing the wrong way and do not notice the trolley. You cannot warn or contact the men in any way, but there is another man standing beside you on the bridge. By pushing him off the bridge into the path of the trolley, you would save the five workers below by killing the man standing beside you. Do you do it?

Almost universally the answer is “no”.

The gist of the story was that the part of the brain that decides it’s okay to kill a man by pulling a lever in order to save five more is entirely different from the part of the brain that decides that it’s not okay to kill a man by pushing him off a bridge to achieve the same end. It’s fascinating, really, but the thing that really stuck with me was this: unlike the vast majority of respondents, I do not see any moral difference between these two acts. This does not mean that I would actually be able to do either; I simply wouldn’t know until I was in the situation. There are other factors involved as well. Would I go to jail for murder? Would I have to face a grieving widow or anguished family and friends? In the world of the experiment, am I absolutely, unshakably certain that committing the act would save the five men in question? But assuming that my act would be anonymous and 100% effective, my answer would be yes; I would push the man to his death. My concerns about the act have to do with the consequences to myself, not the basic moral question regarding the taking of a human life.

I am curious how this jibes with the moral tendencies of my friends and family, those people whose opinions I tend to value most and whose behavior I am most likely to want to try to emulate. Am I really the aberration, the moral cipher that my answer would suggest? Or do others in my circle feel as I do?

So speak up, folks: how about you? Would push the man off the bridge?