this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
716 points (95.3% liked)
Programmer Humor
19154 readers
2012 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Pretty sure there's a base case when you run out of people to tie to the tracks. A naive log2 of 8 billion is only 33 decisions.
Except, given finite resources, the tracks would run out before having enough space for 8 billion tied-up people.
There are 1.3 million km of railroads in the world. At 200km/h, a trolley could travel them in little over 270 days.
Rearrange them in a circle and, providing everyone is cooperating for the sake of philosophy, there's plenty of time to tie 8 billion people to the rails and run them over.
Yes, say there are 2^33 people for illustrations sake, by 33 decisions you (the first puller) are guaranteed to be dead too. At 32 it's 50/50, the odds increase as the decisions get made. From a self preservation standpoint the best thing you can do to minimize your personal risk is pull the lever. It also happens to kill the fewest other people.
The only out is nobody pulls the lever.