Firstly, I am very sorry for what you are going through.
As a training surgeon, I would admit that I'd have a similar approach to yourself. Of my colleagues, I'd only say one in four are particularly 'conscious' thinkers despite being intelligent. Many work on auto-pilot in line with guidelines, which is the safest legal position and requires less effort in terms of decision-making. It also alleviates the need for people to read and study the evidence base in detail. Whether through laziness, being over-worked or feeling legally vulnerable, indi...
I wonder whether a cost judgement plays a part in these examples. Saving 2000 birds will have low effort cost and the risk of failure is less significant - trending towards 'there's nothing to lose'. Meanwhile, and attempt to save 200,000 birds (on its face) appears to entail a higher effort costs and the repercussions of failure would be more severe. Where faced with a situation where the default state is a negative outcome, people are often reluctant to invest their resources.
Is this not just an alternative way of describing a red herring argument? If not, I would be interested to see what nuance I'm missing.
I find this classically in the abortion discussion. Pro-abortionists will bring up valid-at-face-value concerns regarding rape and incest. But if you grant that victims of rape/incest can retain full access to abortions, the pro-abortionist will not suddenly agree with criminalisation of abortion in the non-rape/incest group. Why? Because the rape/incest point was a red herring argument