festivalnut, the point is that I am not deciding that one life is better than another, nor am I deciding that five is better than one. The information needed for any meaningful calculus is simply not there in the original pop-psychology conundrum.

The mention of Hitler was part of highlighting that you simply do not truthfully know that saving the five is 'better' than saving the one. Ultimately, the only remaining argument (save the five because there's more of them) reduces to an example of mob rule - that simple weight of numbers denotes righteousness. A horrible fallacy, and one that has enabled much historical evil.