Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher who explored the meaning of existence through his writings, otherwise known as existentialism. Margo's mention of him may allude more specifically to his play No Exit (1954), about condemned souls confined to a room together for eternity.
The Trolley Problem is described as follows:
- Trolley is rolling down the track
- The driver encounter several people on an upcoming track
- If he does nothing, several people will die
- If he pulls the lever, he will be routed to a alternative track where one person will die
- The example is a thought exercise, in which various ethical systems can be applied to resolve the matter, but there is no one ideal right answer
- Utilitarian ethics dictates the greatest good for the greatest number, so that one person may die for the greater good
- Deontological ethics or "duty ethics" states one life is as precious as that of a group of people. You must not treat a person as a "means to an end" but an "end in itself". You must not create one problem to solve another.
Given that the moon's fragments do fall, this should affect the tides, but it turns out that - in a nod to Douglas Adams (except for him it was dolphins)- the whales are preventing this.
The intro reflects the lunapocolypse ending the world as the music and wall are destroyed.
The moon disintegrating and crashing into the Earth causing an apocalypse is the plot of Neal Stephenson's 2015 novel Sevenevers.