@article {2351,
	title = {The Trolley Problem [Edge.com]},
	year = {2016},
	month = {12/2016},
	publisher = {Edge.com},
	chapter = {2017 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?},
	abstract = {<p>"The history of science is littered with {\textquotedblleft}thought experiments,{\textquotedblright} a term dreamed up by Albert Einstein ({\textquotedblleft}gedankenexperiment{\textquotedblright}) for an imagined scenario able to sharply articulate the crux of some intellectual puzzle, and in so doing excite some deep thinking on the way to a solution or related discovery. Among the most famous are Einstein{\textquoteright}s tale of chasing a light beam that led him to a theory of special relativity and Erwin Schr{\"o}dinger{\textquoteright}s story of the poor cat, stuck in a fiendishly designed quantum mechanical box, forever half-alive and half-dead, that highlighted the complex interactions between wave mechanics and measurement.</p>

<p>{\textquotedblleft}The Trolley Problem{\textquotedblright} is another thought experiment, one that arose in moral philosophy. There are many versions, but here is one: A trolley is rolling down the tracks and reaches a branchpoint. To the left, one person is trapped on the tracks, and to the right, five people. You can throw a switch that diverts the trolley from the track with the five to the track with the one. Do you? The trolley can{\textquoteright}t brake. What if we know more about the people on the tracks? Maybe the one is a child and the five are elderly? Maybe the one is a parent and the others are single? How do all these different scenarios change things? What matters? What are you valuing and why?..."</p>
},
	url = {https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27051},
	author = {Dan Rockmore}
}
