The Trolley Problem with Morally Ambiguous People

There's a new game coming down the pipes on Kickstarter called Trial by Trolley. In a nutshell, two teams of players set up elaborate variations of the trolley problem, and a separate player, the conductor, has to choose which track to send the trolley down. The game includes a stack of innocent people, who the conductor would want to avoid, like a kitten curled up against a puppy, and another stack of guilty people, who the conductor might be kind of okay with running over, like a pedophile on his way to a playground. The teams lay down the trolley problem by playing innocent people on their track and guilty people on their opponents' track; however, I think there's room in this game for a third category of people, or maybe for abolishing the categories altogether. See, the world isn't all black and white, and neither are the people who live in it. I'm sure there are some people who might be considered guilty or innocent, depending on the context and/or one's perspective.

Take, for example, a police officer. A lot of people would consider police officers to be good people. After all, they help enforce laws that keep people safe. They place themselves between dangerous criminals and the general public. Some people view cops as heroic. Yet, some people have different opinions about police officers. Some people view cops as bullies or as pawns that enforce arbitrary and/or corrupt laws. There are some bad cops, just as there are some good cops, but the ratio of good cops to bad cops is mostly up to personal opinion. Just going off of the knowledge that the person on the track is a police officer, the conductor would have to rely on his or her own biases and whatever statistics he or she may know in order to determine whether a random cop is likely to be good or bad.

The same could be said for the doctors who perform abortions. It's a valuable service, when it's necessary, but when it's unnecessary, it is a terrible evil. The conductor's beliefs will largely determine whether they think an abortionist is ultimately good or bad. To this middle category, we could also add super-powered vigilantes, Robin Hood, and the person who invented kazoos. Arguably, none of these people are evil enough for a morally upright person to want them killed, but if one morally ambiguous person was on one track and another equally ambiguous person was on the other, having to choose between them may or may not be difficult, but it would certainly be interesting.

Naturally, people feel inclined to protect the innocent and punish the guilty (mostly to defend or at least avenge the innocent), and that is the whole point of the game, but there are also many people who don't fit neatly into one category or the other. Many people could be seen as good or bad, depending on one's values and perspective, and it could be difficult to place two such people side-by-side and determine which is the worse of the two. I'm glad I don't have to make that kind of judgment call in real life. Thankfully, God is the ultimate judge of souls, and He has a flawless value system and an infinite perspective. He knows which people deserve to be spared and which people deserve to die, and I'm glad it's Him who has to make those calls, and not me. Answering the trolley problem with morally ambiguous people in real life could be very difficult, but I don't think I'd mind exploring such questions in a game.