[jedberg]

The original trolly problem showed that people find it less repressible to kill people when no action is taken. It's presented both ways. "Pull the lever and kill five to save one" and "pull the lever to kill one and save five". You'd think that people would answer to kill one person in both cases, but it turns out people are biased against taking action (pulling the lever) regardless of how you word it, and so when it's worded as kill five if you do nothing, a lot of people will do nothing.

[ars]

That's not a bias, that's completely logical. The only thing in this world you can control is your own actions, so it's completely logical not to take an action that will kill someone.

Think about it: The number of inaction's you have is infinite - there are an infinite number of different things you could have done that would have saved someone's life. So an inaction is the default state in this world, but taking an action: That's something that has meaning, and people chose not to kill by taking an action.

Aside from the above, you are assuming that 5 people is worth more than 1, but that's not something you can know, you can't know the worth of another person. So who are you to choose to kill someone?

[jedberg]

That's.... kind of the point?

Mathematically the expected outcomes should be the same, but morally they are not.

[throwawayarnty]

I would argue the people’s choices are appropriate.

In real life you never get perfect information, so doing nothing as opposed to pulling represents the humans uncertainty of the parameters in the scenario.

“First do no harm”.

[jedberg]

I would argue that they are too. That's kind of the point. That morally taking no action is better if you have imperfect information.