Having a utility function that allows an incomprehensible greater total suffering is a failure of epistemic, not instrumental, rationality. By choosing the dust specks, you implicitly assert that more suffering than has ever been known and ever will be known on Earth, times a hundred million billion trillion, is superior to a single torture victim.
This is probably the most patronizing thing I'll ever say on this website, but: Think about that for a second.
I'm only pointing this out because no one else mentioned that instrumental rationality is independent of what your goals are, so that says nothing about whether your goals are simply incorrect. (You don't really want the Dust Holocaust, do you? to allow that much suffering in exchange for, comparatively, nothing?)
I haven't read ALL the discussion about this issue, but that's because it's so damned simple if you seek to feel fully the implications of that number, that number that transcends any attempt to even describe.
Edited to add: here Pfft said to just take goals and make them axiomatic. That is literally impossible. You have to have a reason for every one of your goals, and all the better to have motivations based in fact, not fancy.
I think that the Torture versus Dust Specks "paradox" was invented to show how utilitarianism (or whatever we're calling it) can lead to on-face preposterous conclusions whenever the utility numbers get big enough. And I think that the intent was for everybody to accept this, and shut up and calculate.
However, for me, and I suspect some others, Torture versus Dust Specks and also Pascal's Mugging have implied something rather different: that utilitarianism (or whatever we're calling it) doesn't work correctly when the numbers get too big.
Th...
The device allows for certain issues like slavery and income distribution to be determined beforehand. Would one vote for a society in which there is a chance of severe misfortune, but greater total utility? e.g, a world where 1% earn $1 a day and 99% earn $1,000,000 vs. a world where everyone earns $900,000 a day. Assume that dollars are utilons and they are linear (2 dollars indeed gives twice as much utility). What is the obvious answer? Bob chooses $900,000 a day for everyone.
But Bob is clever and he does not trust himself that his choice is the rational choice, so he goes into self-dialogue to investigate:
In the insurance industry, purchasing insurance comes with a price. Perhaps 1.5% premium of the cost of reimbursing you for your house that may burn down. The actuaries have run the probabilities and determine that you have a 1% chance that your house will burn down. Assume that all dollar amounts are utilons across all assets. Bob once again is a rational man. Every year Bob is chooses to pay 1.5% in premium even though his average risk is technically a 1% loss, because Bob is risk adverse. So risk adverse that he prefers a world in which he has less wealth, the .5% went to the insurance companies making a profit. Once again Bob questions his rationality on purchasing insurance:
Eliezer's post on Torture vs. Dust Specks [Here] has generated lots of discussion as well as what Eliezer describes as interesting [ways] of [avoiding] the question. We will do no sort of thing in this post, we will answer the question as intended; I will interpret that eye specks is cumulatively greater suffering than the suffering of 50 years.
My PVG tells me that I would rather have a speck in my eye, as well as the eye's of 3^^^3 people, than to risk to have one (perhaps me) suffer torture for 50 years, even though my risk is only 1/(3^^^3) which is a lot less than 50 years (Veil of ignorance). My PVG is what I will maximize, and doing so is the definition of instrumental rationality.
In short, the rational answer is not TORTURE or SPECKS, but depends on what your preference, values and goals are. You may be one of those whose preference is to let that one person feel torture for 50 years, as long as your actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in your preferences, you are right too.
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought rationality did not imply that there were absolute rational preferences, but rather rational ways to achieve your preferences...
I want to emphasize that in no way did I intend for this post to declare anything. And want to thank everyone in advance for picking apart every single word I have written. Being wrong is like winning the lottery. I do not claim to know anything, the assertive manner in which I wrote this post was merely a way to convey my ideas, of which, I am not sure off.