Most people have the intuition that, when we can save the lives of either a few people in one group or many people in another group, and all other things are equal, we ought to save the group with the most people. However, several philosophers have argued against this intuition, most famously John Taurek, in his article ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ They argue that there is no moral obligation to save the greater number, and that we are permitted to save either the many or the few. I argue in this article that, even if we are almost completely persuaded by these ‘numbers sceptics’, we ought not to just save the few. If the choice is simply between saving the many or the few, we ought to save the many.

大多数人的直觉是，当我们可以挽救一个群体中的少数人或另一个群体中的许多人的生命时，在其他条件都相同的情况下，我们应该救人最多的群体。然而，一些哲学家反对这种直觉，最著名的是 John Taurek，在他的文章“数字应该计数吗？”中。他们争辩说，拯救更多的人没有道德义务，我们可以拯救多数人或少数人。我在这篇文章中认为，即使我们几乎完全被这些“数字怀疑论者”说服了，我们也不应该只拯救少数人。如果只是在拯救多数或少数人之间做出选择，我们应该拯救多数。