Joshua Greene

let's say the person is standing over a trap door and you can hit a switch that will drop them through the footbridge onto the tracks, right?

They're like, you know, in that initial study, like 60% of people said that was okay, right?

So something about pushing, and it doesn't matter if you push with your hands or push with a pole.

So it's not about the touching, it's about the pushing, right?

That's part of it.

And then the other part of it

is this distinction between harming intentionally versus as a side effect.

And this is something that goes all the way back to like this theological doctrine from St.

Thomas Aquinas.

And that's been used like in the Catholic church, for example, to distinguish between a surgical procedure.

That's an abortion versus that's designed to save the life of the mother, but then would end up terminating the fetus's life.

Like, are you trying to do the thing that's harmful?

So it's,

Basically, is it a side effect or not?

And we find that that matters also.

For example, if you're running across a narrow footbridge to get to a switch that's going to, you know, you can hit it and save the people and you're going to incidentally bump somebody off of that footbridge to their death, more people will say that's okay.

And that's a direct personal bump, but it's incidental.

The harm is a side effect.

That is the personal, actually the personal force effect, the pushing versus hitting a switch, that was found everywhere in the world.

Really?