No comparison exists if, as I mentioned in my other post, the fleeting discomfort is lost in the noise of other minor nuisances and has no lasting effect. One blink, and the whole thing is forgotten forever, quickly replaced by an itch in your bum, flickering fluorescent light overhead, your roommate coughing loudly, or an annoying comment on LW.
the fleeting discomfort is lost in the noise of other minor nuisances and has no lasting effect.
One speck of sand will be lost in a beach, but adding a speck of sand will still make it a bigger beach, and adding 3^^^3 specks of sand will make it a black hole.
has no lasting effect.
You notice it while it's happening. You forget about it eventually, but even if you were tortured for 3^^^3 years before finally dying, you'd forget it all the moment you die.
Today's post, Torture vs. Dust Specks was originally published on 30 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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