Hmm, good point. I know most people don't think in terms of utility functions, but I don't think it's quite necessary for what I said to make sense. For example, someone without the concept "kinetic energy" might say that when person A throws a baseball it has a lot more "hurt" than when person B throws it. The difference is the KE, even if the person doesn't know the concept by common name or know much about it.

However, now that you bring it up, I'm not sure how well it works in this situation.

"You should turn the train towards the smaller number of kids" and "you should go to such-and-such a store for flour because it's on sale there" sound the same to me at first, so I forget that other people make a big distinction.

I guess the way to test this is to ask people "Mr.Smith wants to kill as many kids as possible. What should he do?" and see which way the responses lean.

Perhaps more people would give responses like "turn himself in", but I'd expect most people I associate with to give answers that would result in high death tolls. I guess I have a creepy question to ask for a while.

Either way, in the context given, I think my interpretation was fair.