trolley problem

plural trolley problems

1. A type of thought experiment in ethics and psychology, involving ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number.

   1 more example

   By the late ‘90s, trolley problems had fallen out of fashion. Many philosophers questioned the value of the conclusions reached by analyzing a situation so bizarre and specific. […] The paper that reported these results in 2001 inspired hundreds more studies using the trolley problem to study moral decision-making—and also piqued interest from people in other fields, like sociologists, economists, and anthropologists.

   2015 October 9, Lauren Cassani Davis, “Would You Pull the Trolley Switch? Does it Matter?”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2016