I disagree that utilitarianism can be blamed for the state of the criminal justice system. The theory that “small offenses deserve small punishments and large offenses large punishments” is grounded in Judeo-Christian theories of justice, not utilitarian ones.

According to utilitarianism, incarceration makes sense for protecting society from people likely to re-offend, and it may make sense as a deterrent if and only if it works as one. The communicative function is important, too. But none of these grounds for punishment match your claim.

I don’t believe these results show that humans have no capacity to act differently than the experiment suggests. I think it only shows a tendency for people (or maybe just the tested demographic) to act in this way.

Other experiments should test whether the same results occur in other contexts. Even if they do, I’m sure there will be ways that people can learn to be strongly altruistic independent of the (a) and (b) condition.

I hope I haven’t bitten a troll!

Science has shown that this is an amazingly effective way to train people to take punishment breeding “hardened criminals”.

These studies you site are short on science and long on hype. Operationally defined “altruism”? This is essentially an inference of an internal quality, and the study is an attempt to hypothesize relationships about this quality. Useless.

You claim this study says something about “human capacity to act” – but where did it get such amazing external validity? How do you know it’s not just “those people” in the study? How do you know its not contamination from the situation itself?