• Agamemnon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Canonically, the reader/audience stand-in is Mr. Leverpuller. Am I to assume that he’s riding in the tram? To where then? Without a lever for pulling he’s now unemployed. He has lost his purpose in life. What’s the use of safety, when the destination no longer matters?

    • Rootiest@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Now Mr Leverpuller receives a basic income from the state and is free to pursue a career or hobby in a field they enjoy without worrying about how they will survive paycheck to paycheck

      • Agamemnon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ah… but what when he actually liked the job he was doing? Presenting binary choices with leverthrowing might sound like a strange hobby to have, but I don’t judge. Unfortunately, the discarded levers from the scrapyard don’t really scratch that itch the same way… they must be connected to something consequential. But without switches to switch Mr. Leverpuller had to get creative: Thus the trolley problem variant with the fat man on a bridge became one of his more infamous later works.

    • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The journey is the destination, and what is a better journey than idly sitting on a tram with no appointments in sight?

    • ladicius@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      He is very content with his life now that he doesn’t have to decide dozen, often hundreds of times per day about the fate of bundles of unknown (?) human beings. The grip on the lever always felt like the cold fingers of the hangman forced to kill anybody anytime by unscrupulous entities who never considered his feelings, his wishes, his life.

      He is free now from all of this, the man who had seen everything.