Moral mathematics

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Under what circumstances would you choose one over five? ONLY if you have more information

... about them.

But that is NOT the scenario you are asked to deal with in the first paragraph. Manufacturing alternate scenarios can elucidate the first one, but they do not solve the first one.

You are asked to deal with ONLY the info given in the first paragraph, to solve the moral dilemma; the solution being "all else being equal, choose five over one". In the scenario given, not some scenario you can imagine, but the scenario given, you have five plus one people, equal people. You do not know their ages, sex, education, skin colour, tattoos, or how many children each has.

The point of the article (you should read it) is that people make mistakes about reasoning with probabilities.