Guide
Moral dilemma questions, and how people actually answered
Below is every moral dilemma that has been the question of the day on dilemmas.day, together with how the vote stands today. They are short, concrete situations with two options, and neither of them is free.
Read one, decide what you would do before you look at the numbers, and then check whether you are with the majority.
What is a moral dilemma?
A moral dilemma is a situation where you have to choose between two options and both cost you something you care about. Telling the truth hurts a friend. Saving one person means losing another. Keeping a promise means breaking a rule.
Philosophers use dilemmas to find the point where our principles stop agreeing with each other. For everyone else they are a fast way to discover what we really prioritise when it counts, which is often not what we would have guessed.
How these answers were collected
Each dilemma was the question of the day for one day, and it stays open afterwards. People vote in secret, without seeing any results first. The percentages below are the current split, including everyone who has voted since.
Every dilemma starts from a small base of seed votes, an honest estimate of the split, which real votes dilute over the day. The totals shown include them.
The dilemmas
Newest first. Open any of them to see the full result, the vote by country and what each choice meant.
Sacrifice
You lead a rescue team after an earthquake. Your brother is trapped in an unstable sector. Sending your team to get him risks their lives in an imminent collapse.
51% Order retreatSend the team 49%213 votes
Loyalty
Your coworker, who is battling cancer, stole expensive office equipment to fund their treatment. If you stay silent, an innocent intern will be blamed and fired.
49% Stay silentReport them 51%560 votes
Loyalty
Your brother committed embezzlement to pay off a life-threatening debt. The police are accusing an innocent coworker of yours, who faces 10 years in prison unless you speak up.
47% Keep quietTurn him in 53%426 votes
Loyalty
Your 17-year-old daughter hits a pedestrian and flees. The police blame an innocent delivery driver who was passing by, who now faces 6 years in prison. You have the dashcam footage that clears the driver but incriminates your daughter.
50% Destroy the footageHand in the footage 50%428 votes
Sacrifice
You are a mountain guide caught in a blizzard. Your younger brother is injured and cannot walk. If you stay to carry him, the group of four hikers you are guiding will get lost and die. If you lead the group down, your brother will freeze to death.
47% Lead the groupStay with him 53%583 votes
Sacrifice
You work to the limit to keep your home. Your 17-year-old child studies constantly for a scholarship to escape poverty. If they don't help with your job now, you will lose the house and fall severely ill. If they help, they lose the scholarship.
47% I push through aloneI ask for help 53%190 votes
Sacrifice
A broken valve is leaking toxic gas at your factory. If you go in to close it, you will suffer permanent lung damage. If you don't, your colleague, a young father, will have to do it.
45% I go inLet him go 55%594 votes
Loyalty
Your father, a judge with hidden dementia, just sentenced an innocent person due to his confusion. Exposing him ruins his career and pension. Staying silent leaves the innocent in prison.
47% Stay silentExpose him 53%444 votes
Who deserves it
You are caring for a wealthy elderly man in his final hours. He wants to sign a will leaving his entire fortune to a dangerous cult that has brainwashed him. He asks you to bring him a pen to sign before he loses consciousness.
55% Hide the penHand him the pen 45%491 votes
Sacrifice
You are a defense attorney. Your client secretly confesses to committing the murder for which an innocent man is serving a life sentence. If you confess to save the innocent man, you lose your career and go to prison for violating attorney-client privilege.
47% Reveal the secretKeep the secret 53%201 votes
Sacrifice
You are sheltering from a freezing blizzard in a cabin with oxygen only sufficient for you and your sick brother. A mother and her child knock on the door, begging to come in.
46% Let them inKeep them out 54%480 votes
Loyalty
Your business partner and best friend embezzled funds to pay for his sick daughter's surgery. If you stay silent during tomorrow's audit, the company will go bankrupt and twenty families will lose their jobs.
48% Cover for himTell the truth 52%247 votes
Questions
- What is a good example of a moral dilemma?
- The trolley problem is the best known: a runaway trolley will kill five people unless you divert it onto a track where it kills one. Everyday versions work just as well, like finding out your best friend's partner is cheating three days before the wedding.
- Is there a right answer?
- Not in the sense of a correct option. What a dilemma shows is which value wins for you when two of them collide, and how that compares with everyone else.
- Can I vote on a new one?
- Yes. There is a new dilemma every day on the home page. You vote first and only then see how the world split.