Survey assumed a consequentialist utilitarian moral framework. My moral philosophy is neither, so there was no adequate answer.

But, if we cut to what I believe is the heart of your point, then yes, she absolutely should. Let's scale the problem up for a moment. Say instead of 5 it's 500. Or 5 million. Or the entire rest of humanity aside from the mother and her baby. At what point does sacrificing her child become the right decision? Really, this boils down to the idea of shut up and multiply.

Never, in my opinion. Put every other human being on the tracks (excluding other close family members to keep this from being a Sophie's choice "would you rather..." game). The mother should still act to protect her child. I'm not joking.

You can post-facto rationalize this by valuing the kind of societies where mothers are ready to sacrifice their kids, and indeed encouraged to save another life, vs. the world where mothers simply always protect their kids no matter what.

But I don't think this is necessary -- you don't need to validate it on utilitarian grounds. Rather it is perfectly okay for one person to value some lives more than others. We shouldn't want to change this, IMHO. And I think the OP's question about donating 100% to charity, at the detriment of themselves, is symptomatic of the problems that arise from utilitarian thinking. After all if OP was not having internal conflict between internal morals and supposedly rational utilitarian thinking, he wouldn't have asked the question...

Hey thanks for this. I had some time and I compiled this chronologically ordered list of links from those threads for personal use. https://my.mixtape.moe/nrbmyr.html

Ah I did (at the time), but forgot it was you that made those comments. So I should direct my question to Jacobian, not you.

In any case I'm certainly not a "save the world" type of person, and find myself thoroughly confused by those who profess to be and enter into self-destructive behavior as a result.

Read it already. Let's be clear: you think the mother should push her baby in front of a trolley to save five random strangers? If so, why? If not, why not? I don't consider this a loaded question -- it falls directly out of the utilitarian calculus and assumed values that leads to "donate 100% to charities."

[Let's assume the strangers are also same-age babies, so there's no weasel ways out ("baby has more life ahead of it", etc.)]

"Utilitarianism is a theory in normative ethics holding that the best moral action is the one that maximizes utility." -Wikipedia

The very next sentence starts with "Utility is defined in various ways..." It is entirely possible for there to be utility functions that treat sentient beings differently. John Stuart Mill may have phrased it as "the greatest good for the greatest number" but the clutch is in the word "good" which is left undefined. This is as opposed to, say, virtue ethics which doesn't care per se about the consequences of actions.

A mother that followed that logic would push her own baby in front of a trolley to save five random strangers. Ask yourself if that is the moral framework you really want to follow.

Nonsense. I believe my life and the lives of people close to me are more important than someone starving in a place whose name I can't pronounce. I just don't assign the same weight to all people. That is perfectly consistent with utilitarianism.

I am confused as to whether I should upvote for "get a job at Google" or downvoter for "prostitute yourself".

Rejoice because the end is near.

Maybe buy Google stock?