

Moral philosophy: Utilitarians are not nice people - amirmc
http://www.economist.com/node/21530078

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frooxie
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
It'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.

