The Trolley Problem in pop culture

OITNB season 5 episode 8.

Piper explains The Trolley Problem.

A runaway trolley will hit and kill 5 people down the track if you don't flip it to a siding where it would hit and kill 1 person.

Do you flip it or not?

It is generally taken for granted both that the question is a moral one and that it has a correct answer.

And consideration of the matter usually turns at once to the fact that if you do nothing the five will die, but not as the result of any act of yours; if you flip the trolley to the siding the one will die as a result of your act.

Is that a morally significant difference?

Do you think there is no obligation to save others, but there is one not to kill them?

Well, consider a case in which no one is standing on the siding.

If you do nothing the five will be killed, as before.

But this time if you flip the trolley to the siding no one will die.

Do you really think you do no wrong if you don't flip the trolley to the siding?

Piper or some other prisoner claims to expound the utilitarian answer.

If it's only consequences that are decisive, she says, then clearly you have to flip the car to the siding.

On the other hand, if it's always wrong to kill the innocent, but perhaps not always to omit to save them, . . .

Of course, none of this points to any real problem if moral skepticism is true.

Though there remains the question what to do.

Personally, I think I would flip the trolley in the absence of an established legal doctrine or commonly held moral view making that the wrong answer and punishing it at least with opprobrium.

Unless, of course, that one on the siding who ends up dead if I flip the train is near and dear to a hit man, cartel boss, or other really dangerous person.

Anyway, I think so just now.

As for the bearing of the dilemma on the episode, it's this.

The prisoners are afraid they will get no amnesty for participating in the prison riot if they don't hand over the well-liked prisoner who murdered a despicable and deranged guard.

She's the one, they're the many.

Get it?

Like their worry is that it sure seems to be morally wrong for a witness to tell the authorities which prisoner murdered a prison guard.

Er, what?