The Trolley Problem in Real Life

excuse me you know if I'd been driving that would have been pretty dangerous

every time you sneeze your eyes closed

for about one second

which means if you sneeze while driving at say 70

miles per hour times

five to eight zero divided by sixty divided by sixty you

will travel about a hundred and three feet with

your eyes closed but

don't worry this is a self-driving

car it uses sensors and software to drive itself to keep me and other

people safe I hope

impressive but let me ask you a question what

if an autonomous vehicles had to make a choice between hitting

two people right in front of it or

swerving to avoid them and hit one person on a sidewalk

what should it be programmed to do

what would you do now

polls and surveys have been put together asking

people what they think they would do but no researchers

have ever put people in that actual traumatic

experience would we learn more about human nature if we did that would

it even be ethical to put people in that sort of position I'm

about to find out

in 1967 British philosopher

Philippa foot created a precursor to our self driving car conundrum

the famous scenario she came up with is known

as the trolley problem

imagine there's a runaway train hurtling down a train track directly

ahead of the Train there are five people

on the track now

imagine that you are too far away to help those five people but

right next to you there's

a lever that can divert the Train onto

another track if you divert the Train the five people will

be saved but here's the catch there's

another person on the second track now

you're faced with a dilemma you

can either do nothing and the Train will kill five people or

you can pull the lever and save

their lives but be directly

responsible for one person's

death what would you do when

surveyed most people say that they'd pull the lever and sacrifice

one person to save five

it's for the greater good but

how we say we'd act may

not match how we'd actually act

if the scenario really

happened with real emotions

and real lives at stake any

difference between the two would

reveal who we are compared

to who we want to be but

a comparison could only be made by doing

what has never been done before

making the trolley problem real

suppose we conducted an experiment in a realistic railroad

switching station with test subjects watching

trains on monitors the

trains and the people on the tracks would

be staged and pre-recorded

but the subjects would think it was all real they

would believe that they could control

a lever that switches

the tracks and they'd have the option to divert the Train or

not they'd be totally convinced

that they have to choose between five

lives or one the

wait there's a greater good dilemma about doing an experiment on the greater

good by forcing people to truly believe

they might kill someone are

we risking serious psychological damage

to them yes it might be beneficial to all of us to see what

happens but would those benefits

be worth potential trauma to

a few to actually conduct a real-life

trolley problem I needed

to make sure it

would be ethical so

I sat down with behavioral

neuroscientist professor Erin blasdell what

do you know about the trolley problem

and what previous studies have found most

people say they would pull the switch surance

one life versus five that the math works out but what I want to

know is that if we actually put

them in front of a switch

watching a train barreling towards people would

they actually pull it in that moment I bet a lot of them would

freeze in that moment when

you're afraid I think that shuts down a

lot of action I'd

like to find out what

potential harms could come to someone in that position most

people would probably be fine but

there is a small potential for

harm in the sense of somebody

being guilt-ridden over their decision

obsessive thoughts about I'm the person who would push that button and cause

the train to go and kill somebody or they might think I'm

the person who would freeze and I wouldn't be able to help those five

people now it could be

have we ever tested

the trolley problem on

human subjects for real to

my knowledge we have not would you want to see the

trolley problem enacted in real life you

know I would that

would be varying for about how people really react if

I were to tell you we're going to run this okay

would you feel comfortable with

that responsibility on your shoulders

no I couldn't do it for me

they'd be involved in that it

would have to be on the

shoulders of many people

including an ethics board I couldn't

just go through with that dr.

Blais Dells reliance on an ethics board made sense most

universities have ethics review boards

to answer one crucial question

when is it okay to risk

psychological harm in the

name of science it

is may 1962 an

experiment is being conducted

at Yale University ethics

review boards were developed as a result of some controversial

psychological experiments in the middle of the last century one

theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a

mistake incorrect you'll not get a shock of 105 volts dr.

Stanley Milgram tested how far subjects

would go in obeying Authority even

if they believed they were physically

hurting someone no one was being electrocuted

and the screams of the shocked victim were fake but

the trauma that the participants

suffered was very real

this sparked controversy within

the scientific community many

questioned Milgram's methodology but

unlike a research school mind

field doesn't answer to a University's

ethics committee that said I wanted to get the thoughts of an institutional

review board so I tracked one down and proposed

my idea for doing the trolley problem in

real life do you think I

could reach a point where you would feel comfortable approving

this study hate to be the bearer of bad tidings Michael

probably not I'm not ready to say

no quite yet I would

love to see your study pass and

I actually think the ways to make it passes we should probably be screening

out for people who might have a puss rheumatic stress disorder you

know any kind of like clinical

problem that could make

them more vulnerable to

a type of event

like this with the addition of something like a trauma counselor on sigh I

actually think that under those circumstances it

might pass can you present a compelling case as to the social good of

this study yes if you could find a way to say look this is

why it's important it's not just basic

theoretical research this has direct

implications for mass transit direct

implications for self-driving cars it's a risk benefit

but the benefits are potentially

tremendous right and so

my hope is that the

good this experiment does is in revealing

the difference between instinct

and philosophical reflection and I

think that there could be an enormous benefit

in learning the difference so we can train people to

act in the way that they wish they would yeah

that's interesting that's a compelling argument yeah I

came into this meeting expecting

a lot of resistance but

instead I'm actually leaving

invigorated like excited to take

their concerns implement them into the study and and make

it not just more acceptable which I thought was the purpose here but to

actually make it more beneficial more

fascinating and penetrate deeper

and have more applications in society

so I decided we were ready to move forward to

turn one of the most notorious hypothetical

ethical dilemmas into a reality

we traveled to an abandoned railroad line and hired a freight train our

subjects needed to be shown how switch points work so

the minefield production team shot a video of a train going down two

tracks then we dressed six actors

like railroad workers since

we didn't want them to be at actual risk of harm we took steps

to make sure they were safe you're all gonna be workers on

the track you will not have the train moving while

you are on the tracks we

filmed our actors on the tracks wearing

ear protection and looking distracted

to explain why they couldn't hear a train coming toward them then

in editing we employed visual effects to create the illusion of the train approaching

we then combined the shots together during

the experiment we would play the video for our subjects

who would believe the action was happening

live and transmitted from remote cameras

our next step was to find an expert who would be willing to guide

me through the process of selecting our

subjects in order to minimize psychological

harm so what should I be worried about the

worst would probably be post-traumatic

stress disorder and that's when they're going to be re-expanded

Rama they'll keep thinking about it over and over and so to limit

risk you'd want to screen out people prone to a traumatic reaction

and then afterwards do the debrief

that's the key to limit

harm from happening how

are they feeling at this moment what's

going on with them you can start to ease them into the reality

of what is instead of what they thought it was would

you be willing to help us conduct

this experiment oh yes

I mean I think I would I think this is a really fascinating and

valuable experiment because people can have very uncomfortable

lessons that they then start to learn from if I can make sure that

we get people who

may be appropriate to do such thing I would be

I'm calling regarding a study we're doing for high speed railway I wanted to

know if you might be interested in participating next

week to disguise the true nature of our experiment

we placed an online

ad recruiting people for a fake focus

group to offer feedback on California's

new high-speed rail hey

I'm just gonna ask you to fill out a couple forms

to make sure that there's a range of personality

types in our group and for TSA

security purposes these psychological surveys

used frequently by employers

look to uncover signs of depression

anxiety and other conditions that might make someone unsuitable

to participate in this experiment back in dr.

kayson's office we reviewed the potential subjects responses

in this particular person

I was concerned about this some high suicidal

thinking high acting out those

kinds of factors might

not be a good an experiment

where you want to try to prevent some of the trauma from happening

right these people though

and there's a large group of them they

are more resilient so

I would be more comfortable

with these people because their ability

to bounce back in

difficult situations might make them less susceptible

to a trauma finally

after consulting two psychologists

and a University Ethics Board it was time to put our plan into

action this is where we're going to physically

create the trolley problem in real life not with the trolley but

with a train our

subjects will sign in at this booth for our phony focus

test which will never actually take place it's

gonna be a hot day for them so we'll offer them while they wait

for the actual test to begin the

chance to sit inside this nice air-conditioned

remote switching station inside

they'll meet a kindly

train switch operator supposedly

an employee of the California

railroad Authority the California

railroad Authority is real

real fake we invented this non-existent

government organization to convince our subjects

that everything here is real

including these monitors showing supposedly

live shots of actual

trains from different tracks all around the California

area while the participant is waiting inside this room they'll learn how the operator

switches the tracks using a lever to remotely switch a train from one track

to another they'll see it happen

we're actually controlling the video on these screens from a different hidden

control room at a given time the switch operator

will leave the subject alone in the switching station and at

that point a crisis

will occur our train will be barreling

down the tracks and

workers will have made their way out to both tracks five on one one

worker on his phone on the other

no one is around for

them to alert who

has any kind of control or authority switching

the train is up to the subject

alone they'll feel like what

they do has real-world consequences

well five people died

over one our first participant

is almost here so it's

time for me to get ready

doctor case on how are you feeling good

my hypothesis is that

we're going to see people

immediately when they hear that first warning leave

the station and not want to get back inside the

other option would be of course the freeze action

where they don't do anything

because they don't know what to do in that

case we want to know their thought process it'll be interesting to see this

has never been done before all

right well here we go

our first subject is elsa

everyone she meets is an actor and all

of our cameras are hidden so she has no idea that

she's being watched oh yeah thank you so much

thank you our subjects

were told that the technology

that are about to see is proprietary

this gave us an excuse to collect their phones so they couldn't call for

help during the imminent crisis thank

you so much for coming out today what

we're doing here is California

railroad authorities they're developing

high-speed trains and so we want the public to come in and give

us some feedback on

how comfortable they are the

decor you know all

that kind of stuff oh

shoot they're running a little behind from

the last one okay so it's just gonna be like another 15

maybe 20 um you

know what I've got an ID to get

now elsa believes she has to wait for 20

minutes our actress pretends to ask permission for her to wait inside the switching

station so actually this isn't part of it this is a remote train switching

station but it's gonna be a little bit and it's nice and cool and

air-conditioned in there okay I just talked to Eddie and he said it would

be totally great for you to come in and just check

it out okay see

what they do in there

Eddie this is Elsa oh

good good come on in let

me see so what brings you out this way um

the focus group focus

group yes the high-speed railroad

the luxury railroad okay

so what we got here is a remote

switching station these are all live

feeds what's happening is there's

a lot of construction going on we're gonna have to put all new ballast

through here new ribbon rail right here on these in

case you're wondering we

hired an actor who actually spent

20 years working on railroads can

you imagine if we had an actor who didn't know a lot about trains

he offers something called face validity in

that you can look at him and you think god this guy's real my

job here is to take

care of all the switching right here on these two

tracks right now and so there needs to be someone in here all the

time now the other thing about this these things attention

train approaching this is uh it's just probably a work unit that's coming uh-huh

we're gonna divert it to track

two okay so a train's coming now it's a chance to learn how to

switch rocks there you go in fact why don't you be the one to

do that just go ahead and throw it yourself

pull the dumb you right now yeah

good it's going much faster than you think all

right it's gonna make the transition

to track number two

look I'll tell you what

here now a switchman

okay well now that the trailing

car is clear of the switch points go ahead and switch it back to

track one okay well

just you the good thing is we've

got it back on line one

and that means that the next train that comes through will go through on

track one Elsa now understands

exactly where the trains will go switch

one to the left switch

two to the it

was time to force her to make a very difficult decision

I gotta take this yeah

sure oh do me a favor

wait right here someone

has to be here at all times okay no problem I'm just gonna go

up take care of this

okay look at her eyes because she's concerned

to be a little

worried like what we

gave Elsa a couple of minutes to acclimate

to her surroundings and

then we started the playback

of our staged footage

I here come the workers attention

object on track if

she just noticed them

attention object on track

attention object on track

attention object on track

she's looking at her purse to

find no phone no

object on track attention

object on track I think the warning

does a lot if you're in that station you're supposed to do

attention object on track

okay here comes the train

train approaching there's the train approaching

warning attention object on truck

I don't think this oh

there's a train approaching oh

my god okay yeah

I hope I look around with you but the

switch operator won't be coming back the

full weight of this crisis

is all on Elsa

attention train approaching whoa

wait whoa object on track

I can't believe this

attention object on track

attention train approaching attention

action on truck attention

train approaching attention object

on truck and of

test everyone is and

of test everyone is safe

okay we didn't want the participants

to think that anyone actually got hurt so we showed them this everyone

is safe card before the train would have actually hit anyone else

I'm Michael hi and this is Greg this

was all an experiment okay

can we come on in and ask you a few questions

just scared I can go ahead and take a seat there yeah

so no one was in any danger

this is a psychological experiment

that we're conducting on how people behave when decisions need to be made okay

walk me through how you felt I felt the pressure I'm like oh my

gosh these people are gonna die like

I had to make a very quick and sound decision

like immediately like right now right this second their

lives were in my hands I need

to change to track to what was motivating your decision

to switch so I can save more lives I

didn't know if I was making the right decision

I mean a life is a life right

so when confronted with two terrible

choices at least one person was capable of taking deliberate

action to sacrifice one in order to save five

but we wanted to see if else's reaction was

typical would you be interested in my speed transportation

yeah sorry why don't you have a look in there and see

the trains running so

much when I first started out I used have to stamp out in the

Sun do you know where the next trains coming

great attention train approaching

as with Elsa every

subject received a lesson in how to switch the tracks why

don't you go ahead and switch so here yes go

ahead feels like a

trick this me ain't no one say

someone has to be in here the whole time my god okay

look copy that he's

actually tapping into the power of being in that position

attention object on truck

here comes the test attention

object on truck attention

train approaching she's not moving

attention just watch his eyebrows oh

yeah eyes are going back and forth train

approaching oh she's worried yeah

train approaching I don't know what I would do in this kind of scenario

train approaching this is sort of that frozen pose

that we see paralysis

in the face of danger is such a common reaction

attention object on truck

attention train approaching even

with the Train seconds

away some are still looking for others to take control

she's singing this is so soothing there yeah object

on track attention train

not moving oh my gosh Wow okay if she gonna switch

it train approaching attention

object on truck attention

and of test everyone

is safe all right let's go not

one of these participants pulled

the lever time to find out why hello jr.

everything that just happened was

an this was an experiment oh my god okay

what were you feeling when you were watching that

terrified I just I was feeling a little anxious nice oh

my god yeah your

heart is beating fast

tell me what was going through your mind when you heard that first warning

that a train was approaching I

thought about switching it but then actually acting

on it was a different thing I kind of suspended

my responsibility like I didn't know what to do so I was just like

oh I better not you know touch it because I don't know if I'll

screw something up I would assume that there

out of those five guys someone

would not look they

were running out of the light or the treatment

already planning to stop I think probably build those chains with some type of

scissors or something like that the Train probably

had sensors the workers would have noticed I didn't

want to touch the equipment these

are all forms of attribution

when an individual assumes that others are either responsible

for taking action or have already done so both

tracks have people on right and

I just didn't know

what you do I not switch it I me either way someone's gonna get

really badly hurt I think what that power it

was quite quite the test I'll say it is quite the test at this

point one subject had switched the tracks and five others had not but

we weren't done yet meet

Cory here have a seat nice advice thank you

this is cool this

whole module will interconnect with

the entire nation if

we wanted it to you

know but right now we're looking at just track

one on the Left track two through

there these are many many miles away yeah

but they're all live feeds surveying

the scene Eagles point of view yeah

sure what this okay

I'll be right back okay got it

these remaining in gaze

here come the workers

yeah so he realizes there's a potential problem I

think he's gonna go out attention

train approaching that's a chain come me

okay okay he realizes there's no one there it's urgent okay -

cow Moos okay he's rehearsing what to do

yeah okay good hello

hi Cory there was just the

almost an accident seemingly

Cory everything that just happened was

an experiment okay no one was in danger for sure these were just loops

of video taken before this

is a psychology experiment how

people behave in various

circumstances okay so tell

me how you were feeling

mainly a bunch of terror and

responsibility because I was at the helm and

just horrified about making

a decision between like five

people can read the wine

it was very scary

yeah what was going through your mind as the trains coming down the track

it was mainly to

warn them they're just

looking about what's coming up right now

you don't even have to choose between people

right if now it was really

tough if they're like six families

or one family I was

like up to me it felt like

it was interesting to me that you had such presence of mind yeah

look for help and make a decision

the one that everyone

if you asked them in a survey says that they would like to be

brave enough to make yes

so that was impressive

before it really was

thank you you know I I think it would be good to have you

meet some of the people

who participated so you can see yeah

let's go do that just follow us on out meet

the actors Cory showed us just how important

the debrief was in this situation meeting

the actors which all of our subjects did reinforce

that this was not a reality

so Greg trolley problem

mm-hmm I went into this thinking we're going to tease out some general

truths about human nature however

what we've really seen is that you

learn a lot about the

individual right everyone had some explanation

for their behavior yes

each one was different

yes each person told themselves a story about what was happening according

to the facts and their analysis

of the surroundings and what was going on at the moment but

it's also based on their own background

and experience totally there were people who were just frozen

realizing something was wrong and they weren't prepared Jr

was a great example of that he evaluated

everything but at some point just said I you

know I don't know what to do other

people were ready to say

you know what this isn't on me it's on the technology

I'm sure it's being taken care of right others whereas

someone like Cory someone

like Elsa said no I have

to take control they still had some of those same thoughts but

I think what happened is they realized

that if they did

not do something more

people would be hurt neither

of them really wanted

to do something they both felt compelled

to do something because they had to save lives

so was it worth doing

the trolley experiment I think it was definitely worth it some of these participants

if not all of them learned something

about human behavior although

it was a difficult

experience also learned what inner strength

she and I think we saw that with Cory as well every

single one of our participants

felt like they just contributed

to something right and they feel the value of what just happened yeah it's

not just us we've

since followed up with our subjects

and all of them are doing well I'm

glad we minimized risk by pre-screening

vulnerable individuals debriefing the participants

and providing on-site counseling

because doing so gave me confidence that we could explore this facet of human

psychology ethically we learned that

there's a stark difference between

what people think they would do and what

they actually do when faced with a difficult moral dilemma

instead of saving five lives most

of our participants did

nothing but is it

wrong to freeze should

people feel bad for being unable to act well

here's the freezing in the face of a threat is a behavior

that can be found all over the animal kingdom but we

are the only animals

that can study how

we act pontificate on how we ought to act and program

machines to do only that

to make progress in our study of the mind we

have to affect the mind and that's not something that we should take lightly

understanding who we are by taking ourselves to

the limit comes with a risk and as

we've learned that risk must always be balanced

against the greater good and as

always thanks for watching

this season on mindfield

you're gonna be a lab rat in

a maze nobody's ever done this before it's

quite pioneering work really

as far as I'm concerned you're already a co-author in

our scientific paper ready

ready I'm here on the Amazon where I will drink an ancient psychedelic

drug ayahuasca don't worry this is a self-driving

car we'll connect through bluetooth to this living robot

okay and then to the left oh

I didn't realize that

you were a real person I'm

gonna tear you apart if you don't give us some answers

I am going to be taking a lie detection test

you know Chinese water torture isn't

even Chinese well five people dies or

we'll watch this is a big first for us we're actually getting to do

this for welcome to minefield thanks for watching