Interesting philosophical question :)

[TheGreatErenan]

The train problem is a very well known and extensively discussed question usually called the Trolley Problem. Many professional philosophers and writers and etc. type people have expressed their opinions about it, and the opinions vary wildly.

There are many variations, and typical responses vary wildly between all of them.

• What if your means of stopping the train is to push a fat man onto the tracks?
• What if the track is a loop that curves around such that if you do not pull the lever, the many innocents AND the one innocent fat man will die, but if you do pull the lever, the fat man will receive the train first and cause the train to stop, thus saving the lives of the many? (Choice between everyone's death or one person's death)
• What if the fat man is known to you to be a villain of some repute, possibly even being directly responsible for the train being out of control in the first place and/or the innocents being in the train's path?
• What if the one that might die to save the many is the President of the United States (or other similar person of comparable importance)?
• What if the many innocents are strangers to you and the one person who might die to save them is a loved one, such as your mother or your child?
• What if you and your loved one are ON the runaway train, and you will both surely die unless you forcefully cram your loved one into some mechanism on the train, causing his or her death, but which would then cause the mechanism to lock up and subsequently cause the train to slow to a safe stop, thus saving your own life? You can further assume that you yourself are the fat man and therefore cannot fit into the mechanism to sacrifice yourself to save your loved one.
  

I think the scenario is obviously not entirely realistic. However, I think it's mostly meant to provide some meaningful context to an otherwise purely abstract symbolic ethical exercise. Do you prefer to answer this question or the following:

Suppose you are given the choice between one person's death and five people's deaths. Further suppose that you absolutely must choose one of these two options and that no other options are available. Which option do you choose?