You have probably heard of the Trolley Problem at least once in your life: say five people are tied to train tracks. You could, by pushing one guy on the tracks, stop the train from killing these five people- at the cost, obviously, of the life of the one guy you pushed. Do you push the dude? Or do you not?
Now, a lot of people have read this problem as "is the sacrifice of the few moral to save the many?" Sometimes, you ever get the spicy add-on of "could you sacrifice one person close to you to save a bunch of strangers?" Exciting, isn't it? Great moral questions! And also questions that miss a lot of the point of the trolley problem.
Indeed, the trolley problem has little to do with morality, or personal attachment, or anything to that effect. The trolley problem, as some have elaborated uopon later, was about one simple thing: can you kill someone with your own two hands, even if you would objectively be morally correct to do so?
Think about it. Really think about it. Not in terms of numbers or morals. You're under the battering sun and you can smell dirt up your nose. The roaring of the train engine is growing louder and louder. There is a man in front of you. He's wearing a Jurassic Park shirt. Maybe it's his favorite movie. Maybe it's a gift from his brother. He's playing some game you don't recognize on his phone. He's level 120. You can tell it's one of his most common hobbies. On his screen, you see him receiving a text. His mother, asking when he's coming home.
This is a human being. This is a person. With hobbies, dreams, loved ones, memories, things to look forward to. This is a person. Like you.
Can you kill him? With your own two hands?
You probably know the trolley problem in the "five guys tied to one train track and one guy tied to a second train track" format. That's the one usually brought up for moral questions and such. But funnily enough, a lot more people have stated they'd kill the one to save the many in the "divert the train tracks" scenario than in the "push a guy in the tracks" scenario. Presumably, because switching train tracks is a lot more indirect and thus easier to distach yourself from the act. Pushing someone on the tracks, however, is straight-up murder.
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma is a video game I have many thoughts about, like anyone who has ever played it, but let's set aside my massive beef with the writing for a moment. ZTD features the character of Diana, someone who is "kind", which is stated to be a "fault of [hers]". That is, as you can imagine, a bit of an issue in a game that puts its characters in a death game where six people need to die. While Diana's teammate often argue for the most pragmatic solution, Diana is the one who will consistantly say "hey can we like, not kill people? That'd be cool, right?"
And yet, there are two situations where Diana kills someone.
The first one Diana presented with a choice: she can shoot her teammate (50/50 chance of killing him) which will save her second teammate, or she can refuse to shoot, which has a 100% chance of killing her second teammate. If she refuses to shoot, she Goes Through It, but otherwise soldiers on. If she shoots, and it ends up killing her teammate, she follows up by committing suicide. For reasons that would be too long to explain here, it is very clear the issue isn't "she loves one teammate more than the other." The difference in her behavior is clearly because one death was caused by her inaction, while the other was caused by her directly pulling the trigger.
The second situation has one of Diana's teammate infected by a deadly virus. Her teammate begs to die, and to have her body burnt, so it would not spread. Due to time shenanigans, everyone involved here knows that not killing the teammate will result in 3/4 of the human population dying.
Diana chooses her teammate over the world. There is no "if she chooses-" no. She can choose to pull the trigger or not in that first scenario. Here there is no world where she doesn't choose to save her teammate.
Diana is kind, to a fault. And that's why she's fumbling her trolley problem so hard. It's not a question of "one vs the many." It's not even a question of "one I love vs many strangers." Diana's problem is that killing someone with her own two hands is too much for her to bear. And I think we can all agree she fucked up and it was a terrible decision... I can hardly blame her on that one.