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IIRC, they phrased the trolley question something like "WOULD you push one person off a bridge if it saved five others", not "SHOULD you...", thus selecting not
by frooxie 15y ago
IIRC, they phrased the trolley question something like "WOULD you push one person off a bridge if it saved five others", not "SHOULD you...", thus selecting not for people who think utilitarianism is correct, but for people who are callous enough to kill. You can prefer the results of utilitarianism without actually being able to stomach killing someone yourself.
(Now, you can argue that it's actually more callous to let the five people die, but I don't think it's the super-empathetic people who will find it easiest to push people off bridges.)
- noonespecial 15y agoIt's an old problem. The people who are willing to do the killing are the people who rise to power in such systems. These are the people who are least likely to continue to uphold true utilitarian values once they've attained that power.