So there's this argument that utilitarianism doesn't work because (per work by behavioral economists) preferences are non-transitive. That is, you can't make a top to bottom list of preferences for each person where the higher position is always a higher preference.

But, like, surely preferences are *pretty* transitive? You can construct weird non-transitive cases. But for most purchase you could construct a list.

@ZachWeinersmith I suspect you'd get a pretty good value system merely by adhering to: do the Good thing when it's clear most people would agree about what the Good thing is, and flip a coin otherwise.

Not very satisfying for the folks tied to the trolley's tracks, of course.