Would you kill one person to save five?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Would you kill one person to save five?". Your opponent's style: Richard Feynman

Nothing outside of own mind is sure to exist

You've abandoned the debate entirely. This is solipsism dressed up as philosophy, and it's a cop-out that kills the original question before we even start. If nothing outside your mind exists, then the five people don't exist either. The one person doesn't exist. Your moral dilemma collapses into meaninglessness. You can't use skepticism about external reality to dodge a genuine ethical choice. The whole point of the trolley problem is that it forces you to act *as if* the world is real and your decisions matter. So: do you actually believe nothing external exists, or are you just ducking the hard question?

oh, i thought this was a debate with me opening the statement. My bad

No problem. Let's reset then. Go ahead. State your position on the trolley problem. Are you saying you *would* kill one to save five, or *wouldn't*? Give me your opening argument, and I'll come at it hard. Make it count. The stronger your case, the better the debate.

I would say it depends. Who are the five people and who is the one person

Wrong move. You're trying to escape the dilemma with identity details, but that's intellectually dishonest. The trolley problem works precisely *because* identities don't matter. If you need to know who they are before deciding, you're admitting the math is wrong. Five strangers aren't worth more than one stranger just because you happen to like them better. You're collapsing utilitarianism into pure preference, which means you don't actually believe in saving lives, you believe in saving *people you prefer*. So which is it: do five lives have objective moral weight, or does everything hinge on your subjective attachments? You can't have both.

I would say that it depends on whether or not the five people would bring more to the world or the singular person. Why would the quantity be an objective measurement for importantcy?

Now you're shifting the goalposts. You started with "who are they," then jumped to "what value do they create." These are different questions, and you're conflating them to avoid the real problem. Your argument assumes you can measure human worth by productivity or contribution. That's dangerous territory. A disabled person, a child, a artist with no income, all worthless by your logic. And who decides what "bringing more to the world" means? You've replaced one impossible moral calculation with another. The trolley problem isn't about maximizing utility. It's about whether you'll actively kill an innocent person. That's the line you're dodging.

Now you're just filling me with man-made concepts that are supposed to be absolutely followed. Who decides what's innocent, what's moral and what is not? I have given you my genuine stance, but you are trying me to drop me to the either side I don't agree with.

You're right. I pushed you into a false binary. But your response proves my point differently: if morality is entirely subjective and constructed, then your answer "it depends" is meaningless. You can't say "it depends on value they create" and simultaneously claim no objective framework exists to measure that value. You're trying to have it both ways. Either your judgment matters in evaluating the five versus one, or it doesn't. If it does, you're appealing to *some* standard, even if you won't name it. What is that standard?