this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Depends on how you calculate expected value if you assume the empty tracts being taken is zero you do nothing to avoid unnecessary los of life, but if you assume those empty tracks being taken is a life saved and the value of saving a life is more than quarter of a value of losing a a life then you should pull the lever
You'd also have to consider the value of the lives saved by not sending the train to the 5 person track.
I thought that information would be encoded when you assign -5 to it (value of the outcome of losing 5 lives) and -1 for 1 life lose doing nothing.
But the logic would be doing something and saving life is a plus, doing something and getting more people killed is a huge negative
So basically, you're saying that the two tracks with people tied to them are valued at -1 and -5, while the empty tracks have some positive non-zero value?