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prase comments on The Trolley Problem: Dodging moral questions - Less Wrong
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I am a conscientious "third-alternativer" on trolley problems, and to me this seems like an abuse of the least convenient possible world principle. If there is a world with no possibility of implementing alternative solutions, I will pick the outcome with the best consequences, but I don't believe there actually is a world with no possibility of alternatives - I reject the "possible" part of your least convenient possible world.
It would be like arguing to an atheist: "The least convenient possible world is one where the Christian God exists with probability 1."
I am an atheist, and I have no problems in answering questions of type "if creationism were true, would you support its teaching in schools" or ''if Christian God exists, would you pray every day" (both answers are yes, if that matters). What's the problem with those hypotheticals? The questions are well formed, and although they are useless in the sense that their premise is almost certainly false, the answers can still reveal something about my psychology. I don't think answering such questions would turn me into a creationist.
IAWTC in principle, but have noticed in practice that similarly formed questions almost always segue into an appeal to popularity or an appeal to uncertainty. Since dealing with these arguments is time-consuming and frustrating (they're clearly fallacious, but that's not obvious to most audiences), it usually works better to reject the premises at step one.
Same goes for most trolleylike problems posed in casual debate.