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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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We disagree. The point of the trolley example is that you must make a choice of killing more or less. What messes with our intuition is that there is an obvious right answer (make sure fewer die) but it feels morally wrong to take action to kill an innocent.

It seems less morally wrong to take action to kill someone that created the situation whereby you must choose to kill more or less.

Perhaps, then, that's a part of why the ingroup vs. outgroup behaviors really evolved: if you have one ingroup and 5 outgroup tied to the track, you can sleep easy not pulling the lever specifically because they are your outgroup. Remember, humanity didn't even invent 'love your enemies'-style accountability, and even that's pretty vague in terms of what you're actually required to do there.

Most of the equivocation about this topic mostly comes down to the fact that in this situation, and in psychologically-normal human beings (the sociopaths are going to sleep easy regardless), a justification will be found to either pull or not pull the lever, because the decision must be made.