Of course the right answer is to pull the lever, but why does it feel so wrong?
In reality, we don’t just get punished for the bad that we do, but for happening to be at the scene of the crime.
The trolly problem isn’t wholly unrealistic. Would you commit a small evil to save someone you love from a greater evil? How far should you go? How do you do the calculus? In reality, you’re never dealing with clear outcomes. It’s nearly always some kind of probability. Evil naturally wants to hide, and it’s difficult to calculate the true extent of it from the outside. The best indication you might have that something is off is that someone’s not being straightforward with you.
At the smallest scale, you’re working at a company and you have a team member who is leading part of the company down a bad direction. Surely you should say something, right? And suppose you do and they don’t listen. Do you persist, find a new job, switch teams? Do you really want to be part of something suboptimal? Do you really want to work hard to add band-aids to a bad solution and make it more difficult for management to tell that the current solution is woefully suboptimal, and so bad that when things do break apart, it will be costly to fix?
Suppose you decide it’s best to put your talents to better use in a place that can make use of them. You quit, and look for another job only to find out that the people from your previous company are bitter about you leaving and nobody is willing to give you a good recommendation. Where did you go wrong? You think for a second and you realize of course it’s rational for them to kick you in the teeth on your way out. They have little to lose, and it teaches the remaining employees what fate awaits them outside the walls of the company.
At this point you might consider that you need to stand up for yourself, and stop letting people walk all over you. You decide to play it smart. You were naive to sacrifice your own good for others. You realize you were foolishly sacrificing yourself by jumping in front of the trolly. You decide to agree with others when it’s convenient for you, and to never be the bearer of bad news. You never criticize leadership, and instead always keep several balls in play.
You become feared, respected, and lonely.
How far do you go to do what’s right? This question applies for things as large as politics, and as small as seeing kids in your neighborhood scaling the slippery plastic roof of a metal jungle gym. Say I tell them, and they don’t listen. Do I tell their parents? Or should I instead have a chat with them, knowing that there’s no way neither I nor anyone else can truly prevent them from hurting themselves. I would still feel responsible if one of them fell down. But I also know this sense of responsibility can be used against me. It might be wise to keep my mouth shut, and to quietly take my child to another park.
There’s a sense in which silence really is violence. All information is a potential infohazard, and it’s rational to prefer ignorance.
Let’s not underestimate how much we’d rather be atomized. We don’t want to be responsible for one another if we can avoid it, but this also works the other way. By not depending on others, we do become more self-reliant, but it’s a trap. It makes us miserable. Atomization causes us to flip between over-exuberant self-confidence to isolating and crippling self-critical depression. We feel in our bones it’s not the way to live, but it’s also terrifying to rely on others. We know how easy it is for others to let us down and hurt us. Neither independence, nor codependence offer hope. We want interdependence.
In reality, we don’t just get punished for the bad that we do, but for happening to be at the scene of the crime. The moment things turn south, everyone wants to jump ship. The reality is it’s rational to stay away from the lever altogether.