Third Options and Old Wounds

"You know the trolley problem, right? What exactly is the problem with that?"

My wife, Araragi Hitagi, the owner of the minivan, formerly a Cyclone and now my wife, was steering and accelerating as if it were her right, and on the way to Tochigi Prefecture, first to Nasu Highlands, she brought up this sensitive topic - the trolley problem?

It's hard to imagine it being the most appropriate, glamorous, and fresh topic to discuss in the middle of a honeymoon, but is there really anything we can say about that issue that has already been talked about to death?

"No, I can understand it to some extent. You're on a minecart. If you keep going straight, you'll knock over five workers who are working on the rails. But if you pull the lever, you can change the direction of the minecart - and there's only one worker up ahead. Run over the five, or avoid the five and run over the other one. That's the kind of severe choice you're forcing the respondent to make, right?"

"Yeah. Well, I think that's basically what it was like... the version I know is not on the minecart, but next to the external points lever, but if you understand that, you can understand what the problem is, right?"

I answer first from the passenger seat.

This was my first time heading to Tochigi Prefecture, let alone Nasu Highlands, so even though I was in the passenger seat, there was no navigation I could provide and my only job was to keep the driver from getting bored - Hitagi's smartphone, fixed in a holder on the dashboard, was providing directions.

My job had been taken over by a machine.

It was about three hours to our destination.

It was closer than Helsinki.

"I don't know. I'm not going to get run over, so I might as well just keep going straight."

"A cold-hearted answer."

"There's no clear reason why I have to do the enormous amount of work of turning the lever."

"Is that the person behind the wheel of this minivan?"

"Nice, isn't it? This is the first time I've given Koyomi a ride, and I love that the roof is made of glass. I didn't mean to do that, but this is the perfect car for watching the stars while sleeping in the car. It's no exaggeration to say that this is our wedding car."

"Yeah, you're absolutely right, Senjougahara-senpai. I mean, Araragi-senpai."

A voice of agreement came from the right side of the back seat, as Hitagi's faithful aide. However, Kanbara, who is aiming for a job in a field that requires high ethical standards, does not seem to agree with the trolley problem.

"If we simplify the problem even further, isn't it a question of which is more important, the lives of five people or the life of one person?"

He summarized it as follows.

"In medical terms, it's triage."

"I see. So the responsibility is given to ride the trolley and hold the lever. As the driver, I am responsible for the lives of the passengers. As expected of Kanbara, my junior. Your explanation is easy to understand. The athletes who will be treated by you in the future will be lucky. If I had continued with athletics, I would have had you as my doctor."

She is spoiling her junior to an unreasonable extent.

I can't join in the bad-mouthing festival, then--maybe this new wife is more happy about being able to go on a trip she's never taken with a junior from middle school than she is about the fact that it's her honeymoon.

It's fine though.

"So the correct answer is to pull the lever and send it hurtling towards one of the people. Either way, it's easy to understand. Calling it a problem is like making up a problem that doesn't exist, which is the bigger problem."

You could say it's making up a problem that doesn't exist, but that's exactly what a thought experiment is - to put it in Oikura's words, or rather mathematically speaking, is it like saying that since the four color problem has already been solved by computers, it should be called a theorem rather than a problem, or something like that?

In any case, it was just a chat.

"The correct answer is to jump off the trolley."

And then, from the child seat set up on the opposite side of the back seat - the left side - a not-so-pleasant voice came.

"Yes. Well, if you can jump without hitting yourself, then yes. But if you lose your life doing so, then it's a waste of time - you have to protect your own life before the lives of five people, or even one."

"Well, if you say premise, Shinobu. In this kind of problem, you're prohibited from doing anything other than operating the lever."

"If you're prohibited from doing anything other than operating it, then you're prohibited from thinking too. Just go ahead and do as the Ooku-sama said."

He'd given her a reason, but since this was a thought experiment, thinking wasn't forbidden - Hitagi, who was called the Ooku-sama of all people, no matter what,

"That's right, Shinobu-san."

She nodded.

Oh... they're talking.

Hitagi and Shinobu are talking.

It's not that we're heading off on a honeymoon centered around stargazing, but I feel like I'm watching everyone eat dinner on a date.

Until now, the two had never had any contact, despite being very close to each other, but now they were in the same car and recognized each other... I still had serious doubts about whether the trolley problem was the right topic for their first conversation, but rather than starting with some strangely formal reminiscence or a stiff self-introduction, a topic that was unexpectedly unrelated to each other might be more appropriate.

An appropriate choice from Ooku-sama.

If you stop and think about it, it seems a bit linguistically questionable whether "Ooku-sama" is the appropriate title to use when referring to "My Master's" wife, but to be honest, no matter how you express it, the context is likely to be criticized - since the little girl who is saying it is in the position of a slave.

"Don't call me "san". Shinobu is fine. I know what I'm talking about. As you are my master's companion, you are also "you" to me - you belong to the chain of command."

"I see. Then Shinobu."

She started calling him by his first name without hesitation.

Even though this was self-produced, it gives a sense of the talent of the heroine who organized the Senjougahara Corps, including Kanbaru, in middle school. She's still got the old hammer and pestle.

"I can sense the bad nature of the questioner. They're not asking you to choose between five lives and one life, but rather they're trying to have fun watching you struggle with the choice of life. Wouldn't the right answer be to run over such a questioner?"

"The idea is always scary."

It's just that the problem is oversimplified and turned into a thought experiment, and it's not like triage in the medical world, but isn't it a problem that everyone will be forced to face, to one degree or another?

Even I, like myself, have been making similar choices.

"Still, Shinobu, I'd like to hear why you're trying to jump off the trolley. Even if you won't die, if you're going to get hurt, wouldn't it be better to just stay on it?"

"If my weight - or rather, the weight of one driver - is removed from the trolley, the force of the collision will be reduced accordingly. With a lighter trolley, five strong workers might be able to stop it."

Oops.

This little girl was thinking more than I thought - I had underestimated her as she was only thinking about donuts. The question didn't mention whether the workers were strong, but they were doing physical labor.

It's normal to assume that they are more trained than the average person... and five of them together could stop an empty trolley... right?

At the very least, it's better than sending a trolley towards a single worker, and I think the survival rate would be five times higher.

"I see. So what the trolley problem is asking is whether people can band together in a tough situation, whether they can believe in the bonds between people! It wasn't a mean quiz after all."

Kanbara has a good understanding of this - this junior will make a good doctor. I'm not an athlete, but if I get injured on the job, I'd like you to examine me.

"Hmm. Maybe I should have thought from the worker's perspective instead of the trolley driver's. It's true, if four people make a wall, only I might survive."

On the other hand, that senior is evil at heart... but, well, it's also the truth. The survival strategy of staying together as a group of five, one person might survive, is not wrong in itself... that's how living things have survived.

"So believing that they would be saved and sending in an empty trolley was the right answer."

"No, Hitagi. There is no right answer to the trolley problem. Like you said, the purpose is to make people feel conflicted. If they give an answer like Shinobu said, they'll just change the question one after another, like what if it was a truck instead of a trolley, or what if it was a bullet train."

The fact that the variations can be infinitely increased like this is what makes it a thought experiment... or rather, it's what makes it a mean quiz.

"If you read into the intention of the questioner, rather than wanting them to feel conflicted, he probably wants them to make a choice. Five lives are better than one life."

Shinobi said in a cold tone.

Perhaps this shy person is a little cold, or maybe he's just nervous about talking to Hitagi for the first time... but Hitagi was once the leader of an army, and while he was once the king of monsters, he was actually the king of a country without any citizens, so there's no way that he'd be good at socializing.

"The questioner's intention. It's like studying for an exam. It brings back memories, Koyomi."

"I don't want to remember that though. Kanbaru, you're still studying for exams, right? Compared to getting a medical license, a university entrance exam is probably nothing."

"I wonder, it's hard to compare a university entrance exam with a medical license. It's a multiple choice sheet, so you can get full marks by feel."

"He's a genius."

Is our junior Black Jack? What a reliable travel doctor we have on our honeymoon.

"Well, I'm a surgeon, so I hope I don't have to be called upon. I want to witness this honeymoon as your junior, without triaging anyone."

"You're assuming that I'll have to triage you and Hitagi?"

I see, that's a variation on the trolley problem... if it's five lives versus one life, there may be conflict, but even if I choose the five, I won't be blamed... or blame myself.

At least I can make an excuse.

But when it's one-on-one, it gives the impression of a simple selection. My preferences and values ​​could be highlighted.

"How do you decide in a medical setting in a situation like that? Um... if there are two patients with the same symptoms, but only enough equipment and medicine for one, how do you triage them?"

"That situation is more like a disaster site than a medical setting, but... basically, it's first come, first served. If you don't set standards like that, you'll end up in a situation where speed is the only thing that matters."

"I see."

You can't answer it with a multiple choice sheet.

That's the kind of multiple choice question.

"It may be important not to see each life as an individual. However, it seems like a fundamental principle to give priority to women and children when rescuing, even from a different perspective than chivalry or feminism - if you ignore individuality at all."

"Oh, I've heard that somewhere before... it's really about the survival strategy of living things. Keeping children alive rather than the elderly, and women alive rather than men, leads to the development of that species, or something like that..."

This is probably a very simplistic way of looking at things, but it's okay to simplify things this much.

Without that, it would be impossible to think complexly while panicking on a sinking ship.

In a sinking ship.

Or in a trolley that won't stop...

"Basically, why doesn't that trolley have brakes? It's strange for five or six workers to be working while the trolley is moving. The manager's responsibility should be held accountable."

The question is weak, Shinobu says.

No doubt they're making it weak on purpose so that they can add anything later, but manager's responsibility... If they are to hold someone responsible, it would increase the weight, but I feel like there should be two drivers on the trolley to begin with.

It's like having two drivers on an airplane.

It distributes responsibility in an emergency... the logic is that it would be to make it impossible to know who pressed the button during an execution, and while that's not a pleasant thing in itself, a system where individuals are held responsible in an emergency is not modern.

It makes you lose your individuality.

"But that's the thinking of the one who runs someone over. From the perspective of the one who gets run over, wouldn't you want it to be clear who is responsible? When you get run over by a car, if the number of people responsible keeps increasing, saying it's the driver's fault, or the traffic laws' fault, or the structural defects of the car's fault, or politics' fault, it's not easy to pursue them... I want them to be simpler and let evil be evil."

Hitagi said that, but it's also true that the world is not all about easy-to-understand evil - although she may seem to be saying something sharp, we learned that in high school.

Victim and perpetrator.

The tables can easily turn.

In the trolley problem, is the victim the worker who gets run over?Or is it the driver who gets on the trolley?

The aloha expert said that he doesn't like the idea of ​​being a victim. Everyone in this minivan.

"So to sum it up, we should be careful of traffic accidents and drive safely, right Araragi-senpai?"

Kanbaru said this, not to me, but to Hitagi - it was a pretty good ending to a pointless chat. Actually, I wish you'd say it too. I absolutely want to avoid a scenario like that on our honeymoon, where a high school friend commits a double suicide due to a driving mistake, whether on Irohazaka or anywhere else.

Araragi Koyomi, 24, is only as immortal as his hangnails heal quickly... if he fell off a cliff at high speed, he'd probably die. I definitely don't want to meet a fox monster.

"Yes. I'll keep that in mind. You're right, Kanbaru. However..."

Hitagi saved face for her cute junior, but as if unable to contain her old sexuality, added, "With this kind of thought experiment, you just can't help but want to find a third way to make the game master, who is smugly forcing you to make a difficult choice, look at you."

Well, it's not hard to understand why someone might not like the idea of ​​being in the palm of the questioner's hand no matter which way they choose.

If Senjougahara Hitagi had been a third-year high school student and been asked such a question, she would have surely shouted, "Shut up, stop," and run the questioner over with a trolley.

"The moment they ask you such a question, you're underestimating them. In fact, that's probably the worst example of how weak the question is in my opinion. The question is weak, and the sensibility is weak."

Shinobi's opinion came from the car seat.

"It doesn't take into account the possibility that the respondent is a sociopath who wants to kill as many workers as possible efficiently."

Not that he's being forced to choose between life and death.

He might be tormented by not being able to kill all six of them.

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