Choice Cuts

What are the ‘trolley problems’ of today? These used to be hypothetical dilemmas designed to reveal who you really are. The equivalents in our online world are platforms such as r/AITA, where people lay out fascinating real-life conundrums, in riveting detail. Even social psychologists are tuning in for data

- Anesha George

Should you credit AI when you use it at work? Are there things that simply can’t be forgiven? What kinds of everyday lies are justified, and does this matter? There's a lot that’s changed about the “trolley problem”.

These used to be a set of philosophical questions that sociologists examined, and people pondered in their free time, in attempts to decode human motivation.

In a common example, a trolley is going down a track. It stands to kill five people. You can make it switch tracks so it kills only one, but that one is someone you love. The answer to “What do you do?” is also the answer to “Who are you, really?

This thought experiment was first introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot, in an essay on abortion, in 1967.

Our world has since acquired more layers; the cult of the individual has grown stronger; and the internet has altered almost everything, including how we engage in such debates. In one such dramatic shift, the web has taken philosophical debates out of the classroom and lab and thrown them open to the world. The most widely used platform for modern-day “trolley problems” also cuts through the niceties to simply ask: Am I The A**hole?

Posts uploaded to this Reddit thread, over 12 years, form a riveting body of information on the moral minutiae of everyday life.

Questions include...

• Am I wrong for not going to my sister's wedding after she called my child “disgusting’ in public?

• AITA for giving my wife a written performance review because I'm so tired of her being partial to one of our kids?

• Am I [a bad person for swapping my almond milk with regular milk, to prove that my lactose-intolerant roommate was stealing from me?