[btax]

1. Should I divert the trolley to save 5 people?

A: Not enough information, even about easily observable characteristics which may make it a morally hazy conundrum: how old are they, are any of them friends or family? I'm forced to treat their lives as equivalent and so I divert the train

2. Should I push a fat man to save 5 people?

A: No, because I have no guarantee or even belief that pushing him in front of the train is enough to stop it.

3. Should I push a fat saboteur to save 5 people?

A: He sabotaged the train with the express intent to kill 5 people, so risking his life to attempt to mitigate the damage of his action seems like a fitting punishment for the crime. Over he goes.

4. Would I torture him to save a million people?

Oh look, pushing him in front of the train was indeed not a guaranteed success. I wouldn't torture him because I have no belief that doing so would yield timely or accurate information, and because I believe that living in a world where torture is tolerated for any reason truly is a net reduction to sum total happiness, even if preserving that comes with the risk of a million lives.

Score: 100% consistent.

[polishdude20]

Yes exactly. These scenarios assume some perfect world where, in the spur of the moment, you have guarantees of your actions. In the real world we can't guarantee a fat man will stop this train. In the real world, does you causing torture to save 5 people cause downstream future effects that actually make the world worse?

Say I tortured someone to save 5 people. Sure, 5 people would be saved and the argument this website makes says that where we stop. But what about the future consequences of you causing torture? The person you tortured comes back later and kills others because of the psychological harm you caused. Or the media makes you a hero and people start to think "Hmm torture, not that bad of a thing.".

If we are maximizing happiness for the largest group of people, we need to think about it over the largest span of time. And that's when things get really uncertain and murky.