Trolley Problem Would you sacrifice 1 person to save 5? TED-ED and Open University VIDEOS (Sp & Eng subt)

Imagine you’re watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks, straight towards five workers. You happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. Here’s the problem: that track has a worker on it, too — but just one. What do you do? Do you sacrifice one person to save five? Eleanor Nelsen details the ethical dilemma that is the trolley problem.

Is sacrificing one life to save the lives of many others the best possible outcome? Narrated by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

Do you draw conclusions from how things are to think about how things should be? There might be a gap in your reasoning.

From the BBC Radio 4 series - A History of Ideas. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bwydw

A History of Ideas is a new radio series about big questions, with Melvyn Bragg chairing discussions about beauty, freedom and justice (among other things). http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofideas

This project was possible in partnership with The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history...

and the animations were created by Cognitive.