Which thought experiment is featured as an ethics topic in The Good Place?

The thought experiment featured as an ethics topic in The Good Place is the trolley problem.

The trolley problem asks whether someone should divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person instead of five. The dilemma tests how people weigh consequences, intention, responsibility, and the difference between acting and allowing harm.

In the series, Chidi Anagonye uses the problem while teaching moral philosophy to Eleanor and the other characters. The show repeatedly places its characters in exaggerated trolley scenarios, turning an abstract philosophical debate into physical comedy and ethical confusion.

The idea was first formulated by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and later expanded by Judith Jarvis Thomson in a widely discussed 1976 article. It is often confused with the prisoner’s dilemma, which concerns cooperation between people, while the trolley problem concerns choices involving harm and competing lives.