Play The Trolley Problem now in the header of this story. Or go here.
In my recent effort to grow The Bold Italic, I considered the silly games that digital newsrooms put out. The Wordle and Sudoku; the crossword. I wanted something more uniquely San Francisco. I don't know why no one else thought of an SF-themed trolley problem before. It's literally the lowest fruit: a cute cable car comes by and ends something you love. And you have to pick. I might have had The Good Place on my mind.
The game itself is live and in the header of this article. You can also play it here.
The trolley problem is a famous ethical thought experiment. It asks whether you should actively sacrifice one person to save five others, forcing a choice between the ethical rule against killing and the moral goal of minimizing harm.
The scenario comes from the British philosopher Philippa Foot, who sketched out a runaway tram in a 1967 essay on the doctrine of double effect. About a decade later, the American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson gave it the name we use today, the "trolley problem," and added a wrinkle: instead of flipping a switch, you have to shove one large stranger off a footbridge to stop the train.
In making this game, I thought I stumbled across the greatest idea, but of course halfway through building it, I discovered someone had gotten there first. Absurd Trolley Problems by Neal Agarwal presents more classic arguments of running over one person you know versus five strangers. I loved the animation and cheerful music by Aleix Ramon.
If I had budget and their blessing, I would have hired Ramon to do my version's music, too. This game instead uses a royalty-free track called "How Delightful" by Johnny Boyle.
The illustrations for my game are ones I generated in an absurd, enduring monthly subscription to Adobe Illustrator and its creative suite. ($70! I need to cancel it so fast.) The match-ups include:
- Marina Bros vs. Marina Hoes
- SF Tourists vs. SantaCon
- Hunky Jesus vs. Bring Your Own Big Wheel (and IYKYK; they happen on the same day)
- A Group of OpenAI engineers vs. One Artist
- Drag Queens vs. Drag Kings
- Bay to Breakers vs. SF Pride
You get the idea. Again, you can play the game here or in the header of this story.
And also, there is no problem with SF Trolleys except maybe the tourist appeal and cost to ride. San Francisco's "trolley" is really the cable car, and it exists because Andrew Smith Hallidie got tired of watching horses slip and struggle up the city's wet cobblestone hills. He ran his first line down Clay Street in 1873, hauling cars along a continuously moving underground cable, and the idea caught on fast: within a couple of decades the city was laced with competing cable lines. The 1906 earthquake and fire wrecked much of that network, and cheaper electric streetcars took over most routes in the decades that followed.
Today just three lines survive (Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde, and California Street), the last manually operated cable cars in the world and the only National Historic Landmark that still moves. To read more about it, try this history on it. The writer interviewed to be EIC for The Bold Italic the same time I did.
The Bold Italic
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
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