Trolley problem but with so many safety features built in that no one could possibly die.

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   Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Wednesday, 29-Jul-2026 00:39:41 JST Håkan Geijer

   @hipsterelectron

   This is not a strawman. There is an entire genre of "I solved the trolley problem" posts like the image below.

   And while they're mildly interesting in the sense of them commenting that the world is not built with human lives in mind, they don't really do the interesting thing of making someone contemplate what they value with one choice over the other or why "pull the lever and doom one" feels more right that "kill one person and donate 5 organs to save one life." Why are those different? What is the specific feature that makes us recoil from one but accept the other? *That* is what's interesteing.

   So what does it say about Parker/Spiderman? Well, the writer could choose to make him pick his love which has consequences (deanonymizes him? gets her hated on for living while others died? etc.). Or the train which might leave him so heartbroken he quits fighting evil and more people die.

   It would be exceptionally boring if he saved both easily or that Norman never became the GG because we live in a world without defense contractors (or whatever the version of Spiderman we're thinking of has as the back story).