Thought experiments

Imagined scenarios used to probe an idea by running it through to its consequences in the mind rather than in the world — Schrödinger's cat, the trolley problem, Plato's ring of Gyges, Parfit's teletransporter. They isolate a single variable by stripping away real-world clutter, which is their power and also their main risk: a clean enough setup can flatter conclusions that wouldn't survive contact with messy reality. Fiction can serve the same function at higher resolution — Crime and Punishment read as a novel-length thought experiment about what happens to a particular person when he takes certain ideas seriously enough to act on them, or The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas as a parable about utilitarian aggregation.

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