That conundrum is rather easily solved by noting that the "pleasure" a person gets from watching someone be tortured is clearly not the kind of pleasure we're t

That conundrum is rather easily solved by noting that the "pleasure" a person gets from watching someone be tortured is clearly not the kind of pleasure we're talking about. Celebrating the torture of another human being is likely to lead to yet more torture, so whatever little "pleasure" a masochist might get from watching torture is quickly offset by increasing their desire to continue to torture. Clearly the universe which maximizes total pleasure is one in which the Jewish person goes untortured and the masochistic Nazis receive psychological help. Just like most ethical conundrums, these basically all rely on carefully controlling the bounds of the hypothetical to be both short-sighted and unrealistic to the point of farcical. How does the sheriff know for certain there will be riots if he doesn't hang an innocent person? He doesn't. How will all those sports fans feel if they learn that an innocent man needlessly died to avoid interrupting their feed for 10 seconds? They would probably feel terrible. Are we really just going to accept these extremely unrealistic hypotheticals where the author assures us his two options and consequences are genuinely the only possibilities? How is the surgeon going to feel if he murders someone as part of his job? It wouldn't take long for him to burn out and commit suicide, adding another needless death and depriving the world of a presumably talented surgeon. In general most of the examples seem to imply that a utilitarian would do the very short-sighted option that has the biggest immediate increase in pleasure, while completely ignoring all the other negative long-term effects of their decision.