How is this any different?

It's entirely possible that he made an error in judgment, and made the whole situation worse because there are two people wounded (well, one dead, one wounded), while despite any attempt he made, there would have been at least one.

I wouldn't want someone to try to save me if I were going to die either way, and they were going to die if they tried.

And it's entirely possible that his decision was reasonable. Currently the facts presented are wholly insufficient to draw either conclusion. So one must ask why the presumption is that the judgement was obviously flawed, and what one's motivation is for commenting on such an unclear matter in such a way that effectively implies that the deceased is an idiot.

One aspect of this is that people vastly overestimate how foreseeable an outcome is. If B occurs as a result of A, we tend to assume that B was an entirely foreseeable consequence of A, and that the person who did A either knew this or was an idiot for not knowing it.

Key difference is that this probably wasn't something he was _taught_. He was acting purely in the moment.

I think was you take that first step you tend to throw out risk assessment. Once you've looked someone in the eye, made whatever thread of personal connection, to then walk away and choose to let them die is possibly worse than death to some.

I'm aware that we don't know nearly enough details here to judge what he should have done; I was responding to the emotive response that we should laud every attempt to help someone in danger.

> not everyone would want a stranger to try and help them in every situation

This isn't relevant to the ethics of the situation. When the desires of the man on the tracks can't be ascertained, his life should by default be considered worth saving, as a fellow human being.

> sometimes not helping a stranger in mortal danger really is the ethical choice.

I have no idea what the "sometimes" are to which you're referring. Barstool philosophers are prone to saying that "sometimes things are other things," which is awfully hard to refute since probability of all events is finite in some universe.

I don't think it was a selfish action, and I do think the guy on the track was worth saving. But all the same, what we do know is that two people died because one person tried to save him, when doing nothing would've only had one die.

We don't have enough information to know if it was reasonable to try and save him or not, or the ability of the guy to know those facts at the time - the information is too sparse.

I was just pointing out that it's quite possible that it was inevitable that the guy on the tracks was going to die, and the guy trying to save him simply made it worse.

There are also numerous stories of drowning victims drowning their would-be saviors.

I don't think any and every attempt to save someone should be lauded as something good, and think those times we can ascertain that there's a good chance both people will die (versus the chance both will live), we should simply leave the victim to die, painful as it is to sit there impotently watching it happen.

Doing otherwise gives is a net negative expectation of the number of people alive, and I can't say that's an ethical choice.

I think people (including you) are very emotional about these kinds of situations, and aren't approaching them from a "try to maximize the number of people who live" perspective.

It's a question of which duty takes priority. I like to think that I'd take some risks to save someone else. I've never had occasion to put it to the test, but it certainly was pounded into me in the military in my younger days.

In civilian life, I'm not going to knowingly put myself anywhere near grave danger on behalf of an adult stranger (the calculus might be different for a child). Granted, there's always the possibility of misjudgment in the heat of the moment, as other commenters have pointed out. Even so, I'm going to err on the side of caution -- because as between an adult stranger and my family, there's absolutely no question in my mind where my higher duty lies.

If my wife were in the same situation, I sure hope she'd consider the effect on me and our children if she were hit by a train before entering such a dangerous situation without any understanding of the overall circumstance

Everybody can't and shouldn't always be a superhero.