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.
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.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
July Part 1