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shminux comments on [SEQ RERUN] Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong
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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?
This is an interesting question, but it seems to be in a different realm. For example, it could be reformulated as follows: is this 50-year torture option that bad if it is parceled into 1 second chunks and any memory of each one is erased immediately, and it has no lasting side effects.
For the purpose of this discussion, I assume that it is 50 dismal years with all the memories associated and accumulated all the way through and thereafter. In that sense it is qualitatively in a different category than a dust speck. This might not be yours (or EY's) interpretation.