These thought experiments will make your head explode
Prepare to have your morals and mental faculties tested.

Chances are you’ve come across a thought experiment or two in your lifetime. Even more so if you’ve ever taken a philosophy or a theoretical class.
A thought experiment is a way to understand and engage with complex ideas in understandable concepts. A way to investigate the nature of things. You’ll find them across varied disciplines including economics, history, mathematics, and especially science.
Given their tie-ins with heavy theories, dressing them up in lively scenarios equips them with the best chance of engagement. Enough so that they’ve become popular fodder in pop culture – you don’t have to look farther than NBC’s The Good Place.
So charge up those critical thinking skills and try (or fry!) your brain cells with these doozies:
1. The trolley problem
We’re toeing into a world of moral and ethical philosophy here, and this particular experiment was posited in 1967. However, you’ll be surprised at how current this conversation is. Take self-driving cars. If you’re in the said car and a group of pedestrians step in front, should the car be programmed to barrel through or veer sideways, killing you?
Personally, I would take the utilitarian approach. One life over five. However, there are enough offshoots to this argument to make your head spin. What if the group of people are “bad”? Or what if the one person on the other track is a loved one? This is no easy decision to make. My throat’s already closing up thinking about this…
2. The experience machine
Let’s say scientists can engineer your dream world. All you have to do is be plugged into a machine forever, never to wake. The life you “live” will be just as you want it to be and you won’t even know it isn’t real. Do you plug in?
This was put forward by philosopher Robert Nozick in 1974 as a way to refute ethical hedonism. Hedonism’s roots lie in the belief that life is to be spent in pursuit of pleasure and anything that doesn’t offer pleasure, does nothing to contribute to one’s well-being. Therefore, for someone to choose reality with all its issues over a simulation would defeat hedonism.
My response would be a no. I love being happy, as undoubtedly so does everyone else. However, I’ve long come to realize that without the struggles and shitty moments, we’re hard-pressed to truly enjoy the good we have in life. Would I wish some struggles away? Yes. But a simulation is a simulation, and I couldn’t make the decision to go into it knowing that there’s still life outside of it.
3. The violinist
A highly unusual situation, no doubt, but look closer and you’ll see it parallel quite a common one – pregnancy. This experiment was posited in a moral philosophy paper by Judith Thomson as a defense for abortion.
I would disconnect. It sounds horrible and it’s not an easy decision to make considering another person’s life lies in your hands but your life is your life, and in this instance, whatever you choose has to serve you best. Just my two cents.
4. Omnipotence paradox
This falls within a family of paradoxes which came into being based around arguments around the term omnipotence and falls into religious debates concerning God, or God’s lack thereof.
My. Brain. Can’t. Handle. This.
We’re leveling God at our playing field. If God was to create such a rock and not be able to lift it, it could simply be that that is the very nature of the rock. The rock could then be removed from existence, thus showing a power higher than the very nature of the thing that cannot be overpowered.
Does your brain hurt too?
5. Prisoner’s dilemma
- Both of you remain silent, and both of you will be charged for the lesser crime and serve one year.
- You confess but your partner stays silent, meaning you will be set free and your partner will serve three years.
- Both of you confess – that’s two years each.
What do you do? Do you confess just in case your buddy does too, or do you confess in hopes that your partner won’t? Or do you remain silent in hopes that they too remain silent?
This hypothetical draws from game theory showing why two rational individuals may choose to not behave rationally, AKA the path which leads to their best interest. It’s a risk versus reward situation. Personally, I’ve already had this conversation with my pals and we’re opting for Scenario A. Best be prepared folks, or well, not commit crime…
In spite of all the fun and games, thought experiments are an excellent way of using theory to flesh out real-world consequences and often serve as great allegories to certain situations which often seem too complex at first.