Nice one.
But utilitarianism is not that simple. When you think about it, in most cases it's more like rational egoism but expanded to group of people you are in contact with. You cannot possibly be able to optimize for sum of happiness on the planet (too little information, too little computational power).
in reality that is true. but this is philosophy it does not care about reality(we all know that it does not exist anyway: solipsism
). it might be better to explain utilitarianism as: would you sacrifice your happiness if it maximizes a group's(or worlds) happiness.
A rational Egoist might also be nice to others because it makes him happy. I don't know about you, but when I see a smile on my daughter's face, it brightens my day right up.
True. I guess i might have described it a little bit too rough.
Rational egoism is based on human nature, whereas utilitarianism is just a nice idealistic concept. To be honest, not many people really care about sufferings of unknown people that are far away.
Though upbringing in society usually injects utilitarian values into human mind (and it is difficult to overcome them), thus it is person's best interest to do something good for society if it is not too expensive for him/her personally.
the pic says nothing about utilitarianism vs. rational egoism, only about value of human life... a utilitarian does not necessarily against killing people(eg. he would have killed Hitler). In the push-a-button case, he might have rationalized it as: my extra happiness would outweigh the average happiness of a person(or indirect happiness caused by the now dead person), therefor it maximizes the global happiness.
