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.
I consider it a faulty analogy. Here is one I like better: if the said speck of dust disintegrates into nothing after an instant, there is no bigger beach and no black hole.
If you consider the disutility of the dust speck zero, because the brief annoyance will be forgotten, then can the disutility of the torture also be made into zero, if we merely add the stipulation that the tortured person will then have the memory of this torture completely erased and the state of their mind reverted to what it had been before the torture?
Today's post, Torture vs. Dust Specks was originally published on 30 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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