The trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment designed to examine differences in schools of moral philosophy and of people’s moral intuitions. It’s not necessarily about demonstrating that you have to live with the consequences of the choice.

The problem with it comes when people assume that the act utilitarian answer is objectively correct, and that it is broadly applicable to real world problems even when there are huge differences. At that point the trolley problem stops serving as a tool to explore moral philosophy and becomes a rhetorical tool to justify and feel better about throwing people under the bus.

Another thought experiment designed to critique this perspective is as follows: while travelling through the woods, you come across a group of armed men holding prisoner a group of people who were protesting their regime. The leader of the armed men says that if you take a gun and kill one of them yourself, he’ll let the rest go, but otherwise, he’ll kill all of them. From the perspective of act utilitarianism, or trolley problem thinking, taking the offer is morally obligatory.

The problem with that is that you can be manipulated into causing harm by a malevolent actor. All they have to do is threaten some greater harm, and you become their tool, which can increase their power and their ability to threaten larger harm. “You must go out and kill one person, or I will command another of my agents to go out and kill three.” This essentially precludes standing up to any powerful entity in any meaningful way.

Refusing to kill one of the hostages, or pull the lever to run over Palestinians, leaves open the possibility of forming a united front to defeat the people forcing us into such situations in the first place. Keeping one’s own hands clean is not simply a matter of “moral purity,” but rather, an intentional strategy of avoiding actions taken against a particular group.

We can imagine a trolley problem where on the switched track is a foreign diplomat who, if killed, will cause an alliance between two countries to fail, leaving them both vulnerable to a third, and making it essential to save them. This is the hidden cost of pulling the lever to sacrifice Palestinians. But it goes beyond their specific value as allies, it also tells other allies that they can be sacrificed in the same way. In this case, it is better to accept a future where an external force commits a greater immediate harm than to commit a smaller immediate harm ourselves but which jeopardizes alliances and solidarity.