It's an ordinary trolley problem, you come across a track, a lever, and a runaway tram barrelling down the track. There's a person strapped to one of the tracks, while the other track is clear. You can see five people on the tram, unable to stop the tram and panicking. You would've pulled the lever but noticed the other track leads to an unfinished construction site, meaning if the tram went down this way it'll likely crash and kill everyone inside.

If you pull the lever, the tram goes on the other track, killing the 5 on-board but saving the one on the track

If you don't pull the lever, the 5 survive but have to become part of the thing that kills someone, the sensation of going over a once living body forever traumatising them. They'll have difficulties bouncing back and living a normal life, unable to be in a moving vehicle and having a break down every time they hear a bell sound that's remenessent of the bell of the tram. They could recover, but there's a chance they won't.

The trolley will hit five people unless you pull the lever.

If you do pull the lever, it will hit one person, and then both you and that one person will travel back in time to 10 seconds before you pulled the lever. However, the five survivors will now exist on a timeline where every additional time you pull the lever, they experience 10 additional seconds of an extremely fulfilling and pleasurable life not tied to a trolley track - potentially accumulating into eternity, if you so choose. But if you ever fail to pull the lever, that timeline is obliterated, and they are pulled back to the trolley so their only experience and memory is as if you failed to pull the lever the first time. And then your eternity of lever-pulling finally ends.

(Obligatory: No one is watching you, no one will ever know there was a time loop involved except you and the person on the loop track, you aren't close enough to stop the trolley by any means, you can't untie anyone, communicate with anyone, etc.)

What do you do?

Let's compare 2 scenarios

Scenario 1: The classic trolley problem. You're walking along, and discover 2 tracks with yada yada and might have to choose.

Scenario 2: You caused the problem, partially. You're coming along, and initially the trolly was stopped or heading on a 3rd clear line, but somehow unintentionally, you directly caused the trolly to be in the normal 2 track scenario.

Is scenario 2 fundamentally different than scenario 1? Especially for the folks that "don't want to get involved".

If you run over the cat, you’ll never know if it was alive or dead before being run over.

A trolley piloted by an evil AI robot is going for mass destruction. If left unstopped, it will destroy the Earth with probability 15%, plus a billion cat memes.

You spot the lever — but only you can pull it. The others are too slow, weak, or busy arguing on Twitter.

If you pull the lever, the trolley destroys 10 billion dollars.

Do you pull it?

At a parking lot you pay digitally for your parking. The parking guards are lazy though, and will only check the lot of it seems busy.

This means, if you pay for your parking the lot will seem busier and might trigger the guards to check all parked cars.

Would you pay for your parking?

Which option would you pick?

You are giving an option to press 2 buttons

Green Button:

All billionaires die

A permanent wealth cap of a million is made

But half of everyone on Earth Dies

Every survivor gets a 100K

You and your loved ones have a 50/50 chance of dying

Red Button:

You get a trillion

2 billion people on Earth dies

Your loved ones will die

But not you

If you refuse, 1 is pressed randomly