I wasn't saying that they were similar questions, just that one reminded me of the other. (Though I can see why one would think that.)
I'd say the answer to this is pretty simple. Laura ABF (if I remember the handle correctly) suggested of the original Torture vs. Specks dilemma that the avoided specks be replaced with 3^^^3 people having really great sex - which didn't change the answer for me, of course. This provides a similar template for the current problem: Figure out how many victims you would dustspeck in exchange for two beneficiaries having a high-quality sexual encounter, then figure out how many dustspecks correspond to a month of torture, then divide the second number by the first.
Figure out how many victims you would dustspeck in exchange for two beneficiaries having a high-quality sexual encounter
I guess you meant "how many sexual encounters would you demand to make a million dustspecks worthwhile". And my emotional response is the same as in the original dilemma: I find it reeeallly icky to trade off other people's pain for other people's pleasure (not a pure negative utilitarian but pretty close), even though I'm willing to suffer pain myself in exchange for relatively small amounts of pleasure. And it gets even har...
Most of the usual thought experiments that justify expected utilitarialism trade off fun for fun, or suffering for suffering. Here's a situation which mixes the two. You are offered to press a button that will select a random person (not you) and torture them for a month. In return the machine will make N people who are not suffering right now have X fun each. The fun will be of the positive variety, not saving any creatures from pain.
1) How large would X and N have to be for you to accept the offer?
2) If you say X or N must be very large, does this prove that you measure torture and fun using in effect different scales, and therefore are a deontologist rather than a utilitarian?