Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

[Segev]

Good insight. The way people approach the problem does say a lot relative to their answer.

Other common approaches are:
Finding a 4th option (because 3 is too few)
Rewriting the trolley problem as 5 new variants
Creating distance from the problem (flip a coin, defer to another, etc)

Yeah. I think trying to find more options (3, 4, however many) is actually an answer on the moral test: they find both (all) solutions provided unacceptable, and will devote their emotional and intellectual effort to finding something better.

Rewriting the problem is similar: it's a rejection of the scenario as impossible, because they believe that real scenarios will have alternate solutions. Or, if you mean things like "well, what about pushing a fat man onto the tracks," that's less about the people answering the trolley problem and more about the people asking it.

When they create distance, that's actually an ethics answer, same as any other evaluation of their process. In this case, they have a set of rules they follow, and we can have long and arduous discussions on whether the rules they follow are lawful, neutral, or chaotic.