The point of the article is to illustrate scope insensitivity in the human utility function. Turning the problem into a collective action problem or an acausal decision theory problem by adding additional details to the hypothetical is not a useful intuition pump since it changes the entire character of the question.

For example, consider the following choice: You can give a gram of chocolate to 3^^^3 children who have never had chocolate before. Or you can torture someone for 50 years.

Easy. Everyone should have the same answer.

But wait! You forgot to consider that trillions of other people were being given the same choice! Now 3^^^3 children have diabetes.

This is exactly what you're doing with your intuition pump except the value of eating additional chocolate inverts at a certain point whereas dust specks in your eye get exponentially worse at a certain point. In both cases the utility function is not linear and thus distorts the problem.