Philosopher Discusses The Trolley Problem | The Human Podcast Clips

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David Edmonds is a philosopher, author, former BBC producer/presenter, and the co-host of the Philosophy Bites podcast (alongside Nigel Warburton). He works as a Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
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To me as a consequentialist and thoroughly allergic to deontology, the dilemma and its variants always seemed so simplistic in mindset because the likely consequences are radically different between the original dilemma and its variants.
In the original variant, the dilemma as presented is actually ethically irrelevant from my perspective. Some people might pull the lever, some might not, and there's nothing I find ethically interesting here to take away for repeat scenarios in the future with respect to pulling or not pulling the lever. The real thing we should do to solve the problem is implement methods to ensure that people stay off the trolley tracks in the future.
In the fat man variant, it is ethically significant yet not in terms of lives lost/saved in the short-term, but whether or not we should condone pushing innocent people off of bridges for any reason or to alternatively criminalize it. If we condone it and consider it legal and acceptable in the future for people to do in any circumstance, even if only exceptional ones, then this will likely introduce a public safety crisis where no one can feel safe using a bridge out of fear of being pushed off in such an exceptional circumstance. That's very likely a disastrous consequence for society, so I lean heavily towards criminalizing pushing innocent people off of bridges under any circumstance to preserve public safety in favor of what I believe will almost certainly be superior societal consequences in the long run.
Similar for the transplant variant. The real ethical dilemma to me is whether or not surgeons should be allowed to harvest a patient's organs against their will in any circumstance. I strongly lean towards "no" because if we condoned it, then even people in need of organ transplants may become too afraid of going to hospitals and that would be an absolute disaster for society.
So I'm still evaluating probable consequences for society, but the real, meaty, larger-scale, longer-term ones. The whole point of making an ethical assessment from my perspective is also not in the context of an isolated situation, but in all similar future situations like it.