this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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top 33 comments
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I love the trend of making trolley memes more and more obstruse.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I agree, it's one of my favourite internet things.

You may already be aware of this, but on the off chance that you're not, here's a cool thing: https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I was but I thanks for sharing nonetheless. Its allways worth to shoutout neal.fun

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you, turns out I remembered a made up word.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

No worries Yeah, sounded like a mixture of abstruse and obtuse 😂

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

this is what living in 2025 feels like

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

Can I do multi-slit drifting?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago

As a good virtue ethicist I walk away from the lever and live my virtuous life

Probably by trying to beat up Persians. Or some other city state. Or slaves. You know, virtuously

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Ez. I put myself into a box with the track lever and a bomb. The bomb is activated by an XOR gate with one input being 50% chance activated if the lever is pulled, and the other input is attached to an uncollaped wave function with a 50% chance of being measured or not.

This allows the lever, bomb, and myself to enter an undefined state beyond life and death, beyond position and momentum, to become the transitionary flow between something and nothing.

While nobody is watching, the box is equally likely to be inside the quantum trolley, and on the tracks, and on the side as an observer, at the same time.

All my separate possibility wavefunctions then may or may not pull the lever at the exact moment the quantum trolley hits a quantum eraser.

If performed correctly, the collective consciousness of the universe experiences what us humans would refer to as a aneurysm followed by violent seizures.

Finally, this neuroplastic wound bootstraps a emergency regenerative attempt to repair such devastating damage to the concept of causality.

A catastrophic explosion of tachyons froth at the epicenter of the incident. They act like antibodies fighting a virus, cascading into a a level-4∆ Retroactive Timeline Recalibration Event(RTRE-4∆)

Boom, The quantum trolley never even existed in the first place.

Q.E.D

taps forehead

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Finally, someone who understands Evangelion

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

let me ask you, you either would be a "barely undergrad" or a "post doc" and nothing between, so who are you - (and no, a superposition of those 2 is not allowed)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In the fictional trolly Im definitely undergrad think its way funnier that way especially if the solution actually works out.

In reality im neither an undergrad nor a post doc nor anything in between. I just passionately enjoy understanding the behaviors of the universe and have extensively studied various topics including quantum field theory as well as theoretical particle physics in my free time for many years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

we need more people studying particle physics in free time

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

is it too late for me to "teknikally - at trains de Broglie wavelength, the decoherence length is probably of the order of size of proton or maybe even less, so actually, the system became deterministic, pretty much as soon as trains started moving, and our lever pulling can only change the results between the (no certain death) and (certain death), and expectatition value of death is now just classical addition of probablities of these added (and not the wave additions) and so, non of the interpretations are required"

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I fight the universe with the universe. I pull out a 20 sided die. 10 or under I pull the lever. I place all blame or credit upon what the die says.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Why use a d20 instead of a coin? Do you always have a d20 with you?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Tbh at this point, yeah, I'm probably more likely to have a d20 with me than a coin

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

By the time I'm done analyzing the situation and determine the best outcome, the sun had already burnt out.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I oscillate the lever at a rate such that I cannot know whether the wave-trolley went through while the detectors were on or off, introducing further uncertainty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

That might not rule out hidden variables, the position of the lever should be determined by the polarisation of photons from the other side of the universe. That way you can at least rule out local variables.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I do nothing. I went through QM classes in my Chemistry times and I still don't get it. If I do nothing at least nobody can blame me for fucking everything up.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

I mean, the blame clearly lies on whoever created the fucking situation in the first place. I hate the trolley problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I feel like blame is the very obvious factor missing from most descriptions of trolley problems I've seen.

"Will it send me to jail?" is a highly important question for something that might easily be considered murder even if it does prevent other deaths.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

the blame aspect is the original purpose of the trolley problem, it's about whether the trolley puller can accept the moral blame of killing the one person (and saving 5 others) in the original postulation // is the trolley puller blameless for non-intervention even when intervention is trivial

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

In reality though it would become a legal question, not (just) a moral one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

I put the lever in the box with the cat, smeared with tuna, which also release the poison.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I run towards one of the slits and cover it with my body.
The trolley now behaves like a normal trolley made out of particles.
It instantly grinds to a halt since there are no rails on its side of the barrier.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

wait till this guy hears about

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago