The well-known moral dilemma about sacrificing a few to save many has now been answered by extraction of empirical data from conceivable parallel worlds via obvious-operators instantiated in neural networks that were tuned by evolutionary algorithms into weak quantum measurement of counterfactuals. The scientists came up with an intriguing variation of the traditional setup:

There are three gondolas suspended from cables over an abyss, all attached to one main beam which will break soon if not at least one gondola’s cable is cut.

The gondolas are prepared as follows:

Gondola A) Asians, probably Chinese, Japanese or Korean, nor is it certain which is male, which female; perhaps Philippine ladyboys. One seems even smaller than the other two, but it isn’t clear.

Gondola B) Bunch o’ Blacks.

Gondola C) Caucasians, white, namely Thomas, a successful, energetic self-starter who is active in community outreach projects, Christina, who works hard on her Masters degree although she is involved with plenty of varsity sports and charity, and their little angel Elisabeth, who likes kittens (miao-miao), cute puppies (ta-pe-di-tap) and pony horses (tra-pe-ti-trap) and is utterly adorable in her new dress, which she made almost entirely by herself, and she is only nine years old.

There were other gondolas in previous versions, but, for example, the Middle Eastern often blew itself up even if the drones didn’t, and Indians sit on top and hang from the gondolas’ sides, which isn’t pretty.

Interesting is not so much the actual outcome, but what the passengers claimed they would do if they had to. The actual result was ‘obvious-operator immediate’: Although the Blacks would have cut the white gondola if they had gotten their act together in time, the Asians cut them faster than the Blacks were able to scream “Holy crackpipe - there is a Chinese meat cleaver zipping trough dat rope!”

In several comparison runs, gondola A was served a map showing a tiny worthless rock of an island with different flags near it, which leads to some strange and often squeaky noises coming from that gondola. At the same time, the Blacks were stopped and frisked, which leads to them being tasered, handcuffed, thrown to the floor, tasered some more, and then put into little cages, where they are tasered (Bzzz, bzzz, bzzzzzzzzz). This gave the Caucasians time, which invariably resulted in not cutting one, but both gondolas, A and B, in order to make sure, because after all, the calculation of the beam’s strength might be faulty.

As mentioned, the interviews with passengers were more revealing and are summarized as follows:

A) “Cut B, B of course, cut it”, was basically the answer of all three Asians, although it is not certain whether all three were asked or whether it was the same one three times. How do you tell?

B) Their answers are not interesting, which is evidenced by the fact that nobody bothered to ask them, and further confirmed by that nobody asks why they were apparently not asked, since the entry is absent. Microsoft Word automatically suggested “B)” after hitting “Enter” on item “A)”; that’s how I noticed.

C) Here answers are highly significant and will be analyzed in future work, also because they differ markedly between imagined scenario and actual justification after gondolas A and B were cut. Before cutting, Christina’s head almost exploded, and she refused to have anything to do with any of it, after which she contacted the site administrator about unacceptable articles having "no place on the American internet". Elisabeth cried horribly, but then decided for cutting A, and, after a while, added to please empty B for her pony. Thomas saw immediately through it all and suppressed his anger, taking on a serious but confident expression. He could only imagine cutting his own gondola! Anything else would not allow him to ever look at himself again.

After gondolas A and B smashed into the ground however, the answer came in form of a written statement about how we must look toward the future, not be stuck in the past, and anyway, let’s face it; without gondola C, other gondolas would not have survived, let alone attain happiness.

It was either losing them all or at least rescue one gondola.