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jackETA: This could do with some more examples and some more boiling down, but I need to post it and sleep.
"This is wrong" and "this is a bad idea"
Because they sound similar, "this is wrong" and "this is a bad idea" are often confused. They sound similar, and are both things not to do, but I think there is a fundamental difference. "Harming other people is wrong" is a moral judgement. Whereas "too much ice-cream is a bad idea" is a heuristic: if given being unhealthy will be unpleasant or unfair on other people and given too much ice-cream then you can conclude that too much ice-cream will be ultimately unpleasant, even if nice in the short term.
The concept of utilitarianism began with (?) the insight that there WAS a difference. That some things are inherently harmful, but others _usually_ are and hence make good societal rules of thumb (aka "ethics") but stand to be re-evaluated in individual cases or if society changes[1].
Like, hitting someone without their consent is, I think, wrong, and the only time to do it is to prevent a greater wrong. Whereas outright lying is normally wrong (excluding accepted social circumlocutions), because society works a lot better if we're all mostly honest, even in extreme situations. But if there's an overwhelmingly good reason to lie, and it doesn't harm anyone, I think you should.
Someone proposed this is a trend between socially left/right politics. That viewpoints on the right tended to involve lots of "standing up for a principle you believe in" and viewpoints on the left tended to involve lots of "this is harmless so its ok even if its controversial". I don't know how valid it is, but I thought it was really interesting.
Conflating "this is wrong" with "this is a bad idea" after all
Confusing the difference makes lots of extreme moral hypothetical situations unparseable. If someone says "Suppose bad thing X was the only way to do Y, and X wouldn't have any bad consequences in this situation, would you do X?" You might try to assume X didn't have bad consequences, but in fact answer the question as if it would.
Sometimes this is just a lack of imagination that the world could be different to what you're used to, and many people actually DO think is commonly IS ok. However, some things actually ARE so universally a bad idea, that even if you're trying to consider a hypothetical question where they're not, your mind will ALWAYS keep coming back to assuming you shouldn't do, in which case "bad idea" has become functionally equivalent to "wrong" after all.
Especially because, if something is invariably bad, it's a lot better to indoctrinate yourselves to act as if it's inherently wrong, even if you think it objectively isn't. I think lying isn't ACTUALLY inherently wrong, but honesty is sufficiently useful that I'm pleased to support the "honesty is inherently good" meme even if I don't think it's literally true[2]
Using positive and negative reinforcement to train children, friends, and other people to be embarrassed if they're ever not honest generally makes a nice, functioning society. Whereas if everyone had to decide every time they had the opportunity for a small supposedly white lie "hang on, this would be short-term beneficial, but it will decrease overall societal trust in cooperation", the long term is probably too abstract and they'd grab the short term benefit.
Conclusion
Sometimes A asks B a hypothetical question, and B is unable believe the premises. If A and B realise this and explain it to each other, they can suddenly understand each other a lot better. "Oh, you believe meme X? Wow, good point, I hadn't realised". But sometimes they may not realise this, and assume that each other have a bizarre and irrational interpretation of the conclusions instead "Wait, EVEN IF X, you wouldn't do Y? Why not??".
So, sometimes, if you feel backed into a corner by a hypothetical question, the correct answer is "In principle, if I accepted your premises, I would agree with your the intended resolution, but actually, the premises are so unacceptable to me, that even with a reasonable justification, most of the time, the justification would turn out to be flawed retrospectively, so I just wouldn't do it"
Hopefully the asker will either understand and grasp your differences of opinion, or be able to choose new premises which are more plausible to you. Or realise that the premise can NEVER be plausible for you.
Examples
I'm sure I've seen both "vegetarians are invariably ethical vegetarians[3], so any vegetarian who would kill an animal EVEN TO SAVE A HUMAN LIFE" is a hypocrite and "a vegetarian who would sacrifice themselves for their principles is a stupid doofus" used as strawmen in debates, as if people didn't have different reasons for being vegetarian, and you don't get to impute to them whichever ill-thought-out contradictory medley of situational/inflexable ethics would make your current rebuttal easiest to make.
There was a Subnormality comic with the question "suppose you were on a desert island with no source of contraception and no way of raising a baby healthily, would you have potentially conceiving sex?" and the answer "well, quite possibly not, but my problem isn't with the hypothetical island, its with people who say we should GO and live on that metaphorical island in real life OR ELSE".
Someone asked, "suppose there WERE a paradise you went to when you died..." and I found myself literally unable to imagine it. Conversely, I remember one friend, when I said "suppose there were a universe that evolved according to simple natural laws, that contained life equivalent to humans..." and he literally wasn't able to imagine such a world (which was very useful, as it told us where our fundamental disagreement was, and stopped us arguing for years more about what we'd do differently while supposedly, but not actually, sharing hypothetical worlds).
Footnote 1
[1] This would fit my "idea which nowadays can be expressed concisely and convincingly, but is a big revelation if you've not been exposed to it" category.
Although, like so many other ideas, people rushed to explore every aspect of it and got carried away, imagining that because measuring "good/harm done" was IN PRINCIPLE a good way of deciding actions, it would be good to come up with a universal metric for harm that wasn't a cobbled-together set of rules of thumb. Which produced a lot of interesting ideas, but shot people convincingly in the foot every time they tried to proclaim a universal standard utility function.
Footnote 2
[2] Some people have proposed religion for the "pretend its inherently good even if it isn't" meme, although I think I disagree. But have provisionally agreed that it's good for SOME things. While rejecting other memes which may or may not USED to be useful, but I think are unuseful now, like "traditional marriages are the ONLY acceptable sexual mores".
Footnote 3
I reworded the argument to make the flawed assumptions more obvious.
"This is wrong" and "this is a bad idea"
Because they sound similar, "this is wrong" and "this is a bad idea" are often confused. They sound similar, and are both things not to do, but I think there is a fundamental difference. "Harming other people is wrong" is a moral judgement. Whereas "too much ice-cream is a bad idea" is a heuristic: if given being unhealthy will be unpleasant or unfair on other people and given too much ice-cream then you can conclude that too much ice-cream will be ultimately unpleasant, even if nice in the short term.
The concept of utilitarianism began with (?) the insight that there WAS a difference. That some things are inherently harmful, but others _usually_ are and hence make good societal rules of thumb (aka "ethics") but stand to be re-evaluated in individual cases or if society changes[1].
Like, hitting someone without their consent is, I think, wrong, and the only time to do it is to prevent a greater wrong. Whereas outright lying is normally wrong (excluding accepted social circumlocutions), because society works a lot better if we're all mostly honest, even in extreme situations. But if there's an overwhelmingly good reason to lie, and it doesn't harm anyone, I think you should.
Someone proposed this is a trend between socially left/right politics. That viewpoints on the right tended to involve lots of "standing up for a principle you believe in" and viewpoints on the left tended to involve lots of "this is harmless so its ok even if its controversial". I don't know how valid it is, but I thought it was really interesting.
Conflating "this is wrong" with "this is a bad idea" after all
Confusing the difference makes lots of extreme moral hypothetical situations unparseable. If someone says "Suppose bad thing X was the only way to do Y, and X wouldn't have any bad consequences in this situation, would you do X?" You might try to assume X didn't have bad consequences, but in fact answer the question as if it would.
Sometimes this is just a lack of imagination that the world could be different to what you're used to, and many people actually DO think is commonly IS ok. However, some things actually ARE so universally a bad idea, that even if you're trying to consider a hypothetical question where they're not, your mind will ALWAYS keep coming back to assuming you shouldn't do, in which case "bad idea" has become functionally equivalent to "wrong" after all.
Especially because, if something is invariably bad, it's a lot better to indoctrinate yourselves to act as if it's inherently wrong, even if you think it objectively isn't. I think lying isn't ACTUALLY inherently wrong, but honesty is sufficiently useful that I'm pleased to support the "honesty is inherently good" meme even if I don't think it's literally true[2]
Using positive and negative reinforcement to train children, friends, and other people to be embarrassed if they're ever not honest generally makes a nice, functioning society. Whereas if everyone had to decide every time they had the opportunity for a small supposedly white lie "hang on, this would be short-term beneficial, but it will decrease overall societal trust in cooperation", the long term is probably too abstract and they'd grab the short term benefit.
Conclusion
Sometimes A asks B a hypothetical question, and B is unable believe the premises. If A and B realise this and explain it to each other, they can suddenly understand each other a lot better. "Oh, you believe meme X? Wow, good point, I hadn't realised". But sometimes they may not realise this, and assume that each other have a bizarre and irrational interpretation of the conclusions instead "Wait, EVEN IF X, you wouldn't do Y? Why not??".
So, sometimes, if you feel backed into a corner by a hypothetical question, the correct answer is "In principle, if I accepted your premises, I would agree with your the intended resolution, but actually, the premises are so unacceptable to me, that even with a reasonable justification, most of the time, the justification would turn out to be flawed retrospectively, so I just wouldn't do it"
Hopefully the asker will either understand and grasp your differences of opinion, or be able to choose new premises which are more plausible to you. Or realise that the premise can NEVER be plausible for you.
Examples
I'm sure I've seen both "vegetarians are invariably ethical vegetarians[3], so any vegetarian who would kill an animal EVEN TO SAVE A HUMAN LIFE" is a hypocrite and "a vegetarian who would sacrifice themselves for their principles is a stupid doofus" used as strawmen in debates, as if people didn't have different reasons for being vegetarian, and you don't get to impute to them whichever ill-thought-out contradictory medley of situational/inflexable ethics would make your current rebuttal easiest to make.
There was a Subnormality comic with the question "suppose you were on a desert island with no source of contraception and no way of raising a baby healthily, would you have potentially conceiving sex?" and the answer "well, quite possibly not, but my problem isn't with the hypothetical island, its with people who say we should GO and live on that metaphorical island in real life OR ELSE".
Someone asked, "suppose there WERE a paradise you went to when you died..." and I found myself literally unable to imagine it. Conversely, I remember one friend, when I said "suppose there were a universe that evolved according to simple natural laws, that contained life equivalent to humans..." and he literally wasn't able to imagine such a world (which was very useful, as it told us where our fundamental disagreement was, and stopped us arguing for years more about what we'd do differently while supposedly, but not actually, sharing hypothetical worlds).
Footnote 1
[1] This would fit my "idea which nowadays can be expressed concisely and convincingly, but is a big revelation if you've not been exposed to it" category.
Although, like so many other ideas, people rushed to explore every aspect of it and got carried away, imagining that because measuring "good/harm done" was IN PRINCIPLE a good way of deciding actions, it would be good to come up with a universal metric for harm that wasn't a cobbled-together set of rules of thumb. Which produced a lot of interesting ideas, but shot people convincingly in the foot every time they tried to proclaim a universal standard utility function.
Footnote 2
[2] Some people have proposed religion for the "pretend its inherently good even if it isn't" meme, although I think I disagree. But have provisionally agreed that it's good for SOME things. While rejecting other memes which may or may not USED to be useful, but I think are unuseful now, like "traditional marriages are the ONLY acceptable sexual mores".
Footnote 3
I reworded the argument to make the flawed assumptions more obvious.