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cousin_it comments on Revisiting torture vs. dust specks - Less Wrong
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Then your utility function can no longer say 25 years of torture is preferable to 50 years. This difficulty is surmountable - I believe the original post had some discussion on hyperreal utilities and the like - but the scheme looks a little contrived to me.
To me, a utility function is a contrivance. So it's OK if it's contrived. It's a map, not the territory, as illustrated above.
I take someone's answer to this question at their word. When they say that no number of dust specks equals torture, I accept that as a datum for their utility function. The task is then to contrive a function which is consistent with that.