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ArisKatsaris comments on Metacontrarian Metaethics - Less Wrong
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I think torture v. dust specks and similar problems can be illuminated by flipping them around and examining them from the perspective of the potential victims. Given a choice between getting a dust speck in the eye with probability 1 or a 1-in-3^^^^^3 chance of being tortured, I suspect the vast majority of individuals will actually opt for the dust speck, and I don't think this is just insensitivity to the scope of 3^^^^^3. Dust specks are such a trivial inconvenience that people generally don't choose to do any of the easy things they could do to minimize the chances of getting one (e.g. regularly dusting their environment, wearing goggles, etc.) On the other hand, most people would do anything to stop being tortured, up to and including suicide if the torture has no apparent end point. The difference here is arguably not expressible as a finite number.
Pardon me, I have to go flush my cornea.
I think it is. Imagine that the same trade is offered you a trillion times. Or imagine that it's automatically offered or rejected (unconsciously by default, but you have the ability to change the default) every second of your life.
After spending a week getting a dust speck in the eye every single second, I think you'll do the math and opt to be choosing the 1-in-3^^^^^3 chance of torture instead.
That is an entirely different scenario than what Prismattic is describing. In fact, a dust speck in the eye every single second would be an extremely effective form of torture.
Indeed. More abstractly: pleasure and suffering aren't so nice as to neatly add and multiply like pretty little scalars.
Even if you wish to talk about "utils/utilons" - it is by no means obvious that ten dust specks are worth exactly ten times as many (negative) utils as one dust speck.
Getting a dust speck for a moment is a minor nuisance. Getting an uninterrupted series of dust specks forever is torture. It's not a particularly invasive form, but it is debilitating.
He was trying to show the difference between something which actually happens and has an effect versus something which will only happen with a 1-in-3^^^^^3 chance: one exists in this universe, the other does not.
If we changed it to be one dust speck per second and a 1-in-3^^^^^3 chance every second that you are quantum teleported to a random planet in the universe, you'd swallow that planet in the ever-expanding black hole you'd become long, long before you're teleported there.
Okay, what about a dust speck per hour or a dust speck per ten minutes. Still a minor nuisance, but has it reached to the point you'd prefer to have a 1-in-3^^^^^3 chance of being tortured?