The trolley problem is a hypothetical situation designed to explore the clash between following deontological principles and allowing a great deal of harm to occur. So, in setting up this problem, we should be trying to limit these extraneous factors as much as possible. So we'll say that you are the person in charge with absolute authority over what call to make. We will say that none of this is your fault or anyone's fault - these people just mysteriously appeared on the tracks as a result of quantum fluctuations.

There is a third approach to the trolley problem, which I have not often seen discussed: whose property are the trolley tracks?

In other words, does this require a universal answer, or can this allow for diversity based on property and agreement? When you board a ship, you know that the captain has the last word when it comes to life-or-death situations, and different captains may have different judgement. The same goes for trolley tracks. The principles can be explained beforehand (such as "the mission comes first"). Another question that seems relevant to the person in charge (owner) is whether the 5 people are to blame for putting themselves at risk.

If I remember correctly, Jaynes discusses this in Probability Theory and arrives at the conclusion that if a reasoning robot assigned a probability to its changing its mind a certain way, then it should update its belief now. Of course, the general caveat here: humans are not robots, they don't perfectly adhere to either formal logical or plausible reasoning.

There is a difference between P("Heads came up") and P("Heads came up" given that "I was just woken up"). Since you will be woken up (memory-less) multiple times if tails came up, the fact that you are just getting woken up gives you information and increases the probability that tails came up.

Let's consider P(H | JustWoken) = P(H and Monday | JustWoken) + P(H and Tuesday | JustWoken) Because I have no information about the scientist's behavior (when he chooses to ask the question), I have to assign equal probabilities (one third) to P(H and Monday | JustWoken), P(T and Monday | JustWoken) and P(T and Tuesday | JustWoken). And it's impossible to be woken up on Tuesday if Heads came up, so P(H and Tuesday | JustWoken) = 0. In result, P(H | JustWoken) = 1/3.

If anyone doubts that, we could set up a computer simulation (you write the scientist and coin code and I write code for the beauty answering the question) and we bet. But I would require an experimental condition, stating that the scientist will ask the beauty the question every time she wakes up. Under those conditions, a beauty which always bets that "tails came up" any time she gets woken up will win 2/3 of the time. If we could not agree to those conditions (getting interviewed by the scientist on every occasion), the bet would be broken because you know what answer I will give and you have information that I don't have (strategy for when to interview).

It would be helpful to define terms first. Capitalism is the system of private ownership of scarce objects. People are scarce, land is scarce, resources are scarce. Even if energy becomes plentiful, the means of production of that energy will remain scarce (solar panels and other capital goods). Even if you can 3D print any object, the resources used as inputs are still scarce.

In short, scarcity will not go away, although it will continue to get significantly better, as more valuable and useful things can be produced with less (less labor, less energy, less resources, etc). Therefore private ownership and voluntary association, aka capitalism, will remain.

You gotta put more interesting information in if you want anyone to take this seriously as more than an advertisement. Things that you could discuss to make me more curious and likely to click your link:

• Why doesn't this already exist?
• If this works out well for the participants, why don't employees of companies organize like this instead of going through an insurance provider?
• I often hear that health care costs are drastically inflated for non-insured customers. Is that true? How does this model deal with that? Can the groups negotiate with care providers to bring costs down?

Backed. Thanks for starting this project.

What will be the recommended software to consume this?

I'm an Audible member anymore. I'm using a regular podcast iOS app (called RSSRadio) for HPMOR at the moment, but it's a bit manual (have to download each episode from archive). It seems like there would be a way to package an audio book (mp3 files + some XML metadata) and have an app that can consume that. Basically, like Audible but with a simple/open format. But I haven't found any so far.