I'm sure you know the train question. If a train is going along and the conductor sees a child on the rails, but can change rails to another track, but that one has five. What do you do?
The actual answer is changing tracks has the train going slow so it doesn't derail. I have had family in the train engineering business for generations. So the actual answer is, the brakes you're going slow enough to stop easily.
I realized that yesterday while watching some old Doctor Who near a train station.
Anyway, the reason why I bring it up is I am arguing with someone that the answer is there, but not given by the original question. Also, no one thought to ask anyone in the train industry. I looked the guy up, and he's a lefty. It makes me realize that much of our society is based on the idea of false choices. There is always another answer, but the media and government act as if there is no alternatives. Then we make sure to ignore all evidence pointing to alternatives. This is society, trying to make a choice while the train stops on its own.
This is why ethical dilemmas/thought experiments are ultimately silly, even though they can be fun to debate. I can imagine there are many real life scenarios where actively choosing to be a "non-puller" is the correct non-cowardly choice. He just sounds to me like a creative thinker who wanted to make a statement about the many dichotomies people take for granted. A mere selfish coward trying to rationalize or cope with their cowardly ways would not be publicly pondering an alternate explanation to a thought experiment. Most people wouldn't even think of themselves as non-pullers - unless they had strongly reasoned principles for being that way, and in a real situation they might actually be pullers. Cowards and heroes are created in the moment, and the way someone acts in one situation won't be how they act in all situations.
Unless he has had some kind of personal tragedy where he ended up being a non-puller, and can't live with himself, and this random post is his way of dealing with that. I doubt it...
But "You're a non-puller who just doesn't want to admit it!" did give me a good laugh. It's like a line from a Seinfeld episode.
Lmao - the Seinfeld gang probably would have gone for the XTREME TROLLEY DOUBLE TRACK DRIFT:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/096/630/bc7.png