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[–]AbeFroman 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've never heard of this before. If the only options are kill one person or kill five, I'd choose to only kill one. Am I missing something?

[–]PickleRick 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What you're missing is that the composition of the people (age, demographics) vary, as well as how they got into the situation. In the real problem you'd have, let's say, five murderers who are running from the police against traffic, and one law-abiding pregnant woman doing everything she should be. Now who dies?

I propose that the question also needs to take into account that every pedestrian should be looking around even if they think it's safe. If the self-driving car is coming at you, don't assume it will stop. A woman was killed near me by a self-driving car while walking in the dark not looking at traffic. I don't care if you have right of way, that's a stupid thing to have on your tombstone. So if people are looking, they can be part of the solution, which changes things. The people on the other side of the street would not expect a car to swerve and come at them from the wrong direction, so they wouldn't be looking.