First thanks for the answer! ANd for the opportunity to chat..
Ok, but there was a New York Times (IIRC) article, saying university had spoiled philosophy, which used to be about who was the wisest. My personal take on 1 versus 1000 issue, well it has to be about rational attraction to being.
And in this case its so complicated an issue theres no hard and fast answer.
Trying to look for "the answer" is like trying to do the impossible.
The further away from unit-value focus we go (in terms of being wired to ones own being towards calculating for the masses) the further from the "narrrow gate" we to into the realm of uncertainty.
And because theres no stipulation about which agent to care for most (from an abstact POV) the math or logic is open to many interpretations.
We can have self focus, but theres much plasticity - i.e. flexibility - about which path one should take.
graph created here:
https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx
ETA I may be using "bounded rationality" in an odd sense.
For each agent there is a fitness landscape, in terms of the utility of any decision would have. Because life is so complex (chaotic) i think we should stick to high certainty principles of personal well being, and not get drawn into hyperspaces where we have to calculate trillions of variables or people interacting.
“Honor the physician with the honour due unto him for the uses ye may have of him: for the Lord created him….The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them…. And the Lord hath given men skill, that He might be honored in His marvelous works. With such doth [the physician] heal men, and taketh away their pains. Of such doth the apothecary make a confection; and of his works there is no end; and from him is peace over all the earth” (Wisdom of Sirach 38:1-8).
source:
http://nstanosheck.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/why-orthodox-christians-prefer.html
Trolley problems are better answered with
health food. Society is an emergent phenomenon form billions of agents interacting. You can predict personal weather better than mass scale weather, because an apple a day for me is a fairly simple equation to assimilate, whereas if you input that into a chaotic system the cumulative effects are untestable...
from wikipedia:
In evolutionary biology, fitness landscapes or adaptive landscapes (types of Evolutionary landscapes) are used to visualize the relationship between genotypes and reproductive success. It is assumed that every genotype has a well-defined replication rate (often referred to as fitness).
There may be interesting angles from "game theory" though...(ie we have numbers of agents connected in a network,
all faced with the same "1 or 1000" scenario....)