The trolley problem seems to exemplify our desire to find rules to guide our decisions. Why? Can’t we accept that life is a constant process of having to make decisions and while guides are useful, obsessing over them is likely counterproductive overthinking. Life is complicated and every event in our life is the result of myriad input, so thinking our responses have to fit a particular framework seems simplistic.

Yes, we have cultural mores and civil laws we need to keep in mind and in a reflective analysis, it is certainly useful to game out the consequences, as that would seem to be the primary function of reflection, but it shouldn’t lock us into rigid courses of action. It’s a form of ideology.

Our decision making is a small, but necessary part of nature’s process of selection and when it gets too rigid and therefore unthinking, we become the ones selected out.

We become a chess piece, not a chess player.