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The Trolley Problem in Real Life

12 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this documentary3 months2021–2026 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Recommended as a worthwhile real-world experiment whenever trolley problems or moral dilemmas come up.

Vsauce's Michael Stevens stages a realistic version of the trolley problem with unsuspecting subjects who believe they must decide a life-or-death outcome. The Mind Field episode compares what people say they would do with what they actually do.

“The video is well worth a watch” (HN, 2021)

3 recommendations · Documentaries

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@wongarsu Feb 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Hypothetical Judgment versus Real-Life Behavior in Trolley-Style Moral Dilemmas
The youtube channel vsauce tried putting people in this situation by putting them in a fake railroad switching outpost and having the operator step out for a phonecall. They took care to educate the subject exactly on how the system works without them suspecting anything, trying to eliminate many of the factors you mention. The video is well worth a watch [this video]
Vsauce stages a real trolley switch scenario with unsuspecting subjects
@Sceptique Jul 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Absurd Trolley Problems
They did this experiment in real life [this video] . It's not 100% perfect but it is still an amazing test.
Real-life trolley problem experiment
@Imustaskforhelp Apr 2026 Recommends
on HN thread Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack
Read more
> Perhaps something to think about in a scenario like this. Personally I think it's interesting that some people are so quick to condone aggressive attacks on powerful people, yet have no comment on those powerful people committing lower levels of violence against the masses. It's all social context. Can I just say that out of all of this discourse happening, this might be the most insightful yet succint position to explain my stance on all of this especially the "its all social context." line. I feel like many of us here might share an answer publicly but I have always believed that if I am in the shoes of someone else, I might act the way they do so in a sense I understand the human part of it. A human did the violence and why. I understand that. Now we can call this violence inhuman, sure, but this action is still done by human and for many reasons. And I also understand why people condemn these actions, we wish to live in a clean and structural world and then we see the messiness of the world. I just feel like just condemning an action would do nothing unless we change the ground conditions but that isn't in the hands of even many of us Hackernews users and this is basically a class aspect to it. I personally feel like there are some similarities to this incident to the Trolley problem actually. Vsauce did a video about it worth watching[0] Thank you for writing this comment. [0]: [this video]
Vsauce on a real-life trolley problem

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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