If you ask me, the prevalence of torture scenarios on this site has very little to do with clarity and a great deal to do with a certain kind of autism-y obsession with things that might happen but probably won't.
Pondering blue tentacle scenarios can be a displacement activity, to avoid dealing with things that really might happen, or be made to happen, here and now.
This is our monthly thread for collecting arbitrarily contrived scenarios in which somebody gets tortured for 3^^^^^3 years, or an infinite number of people experience an infinite amount of sorrow, or a baby gets eaten by a shark, etc. and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions. As everyone knows, this is the most rational and non-obnoxious way to think about incentives and disincentives.