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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
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Given some heavy utilitarian assumptions. This isn't an argument, it's more plausible to just postulate disutility of torture without explanation.
It's arbitrarily chosen from the dust speck being -1, I find it easier to imagine one second of torture than years for comparing to something that happens in less than a second. It's just an example.
The importance of an argument doesn't matter for the severity of an error in reasoning present in that argument. The error might be unimportant in itself, but that it was made in an unimportant argument doesn't argue for the unimportance of the error.
Oh. I misinterpreted what error you were referencing. yea, you're right I guess.
Sorry.
And from this I can't infer whether communication succeeded or you are just making a social sound (not that it's very polite of me to remark this).
I first thought you had a problem with me making the number -1 000 000 from nowhere. Later I realized you meant that to some people it might not be obvious that the utility of 50 years of torture is the average utility per second time the number of seconds.