Wait. Which side of the rephrasing corresponds to which side of the original?
Certain chance of dust speck = 3^^^3 people get dust specks;
One-in-3^^^3 chance of torture = one person gets tortured for 50 years.
(Just consider a population of 3^^^3, and choose between them all getting dust specks, or one of them getting tortured. If I was in that population, I'd vote for the torture.)
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.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.