MAD trollies

Eneasz Brodski
Map and Territory
Published in
2 min readJan 22, 2017

(text of pic: You and some other guy are glued to the tracks. Any of you can pull the lever, releasing the trolley and killing the other guy. You told the other guy that you’ll pulll the level if he does, hoping he won’t kill you. After a long time, he finally pulls the lever. Do you keep your promise and lead to 2 deaths instead of 1?)

This is prob common knowledge, but hey, here’s my answers
1 — Yes. If someone’s killing me, sure as hell I’m gonna do everything in my power to kill him back. Screw that guy.
2 — Yes. If you don’t follow through on precommitments, it leaves you open to exploitation by defectors. Slightly less important for you personally if there’s only one of you but…
..2a — could still be very important if someone has access to your source code, OR if you’re actually a simulation being simulated by a predictor to see what the real-you would do in this situation so they know if it’s safe to defect or not, and
..2b — even if this is the real world rather than a simulation, your actions will reflect on those who are similar to you, which likely includes many of your friends and loved ones. If you don’t pull the lever, this is weak-to-moderate evidence that your loved ones also wouldn’t pull the lever if put in the same situation, and that leaves them open to exploitation.
3 — This would be much harder to apply in the case of actual nuclear weapons. But fortunately these are trolleys, so I don’t have to think that hard :)

The more interesting question is… if you’re glued to the tracks and have nothing else to do for your entire life (and you can’t talk to the other guy)… should you pull the lever just for the excitement of seeing what he’ll do?

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app