Sure, and that is intentional. You wouldn't bother polling the universe to determine their answer to the same paradox you're solving.
You can look at it this way. Each person who responds to your poll is basically telling you: "Do not factor me, personally, into your utility calculation." It is equivalent to opting out of the equation. "Don't you dare torture someone on my behalf!" The "dust-speck holocaust" then disappears!
Imagine this: You send everyone a little message that says, "Warning! You are about to get an annoying dust speck in your eye. But, partially due to this sacrifice of your comfort, someone else will be spared horrible torture." Would/should they care that the degree to which they contributed to saving someone from torture is infinitesimal?
Let's go on to pretend that we asked Omega to calculate exactly how many humans with dust-specks is equivalent to one person being tortured for fifty years. Let's pretend this number comes out to 1x10^14 people. Turns out it was much smaller than 3^^^3. Omega gives us all this information and then tells us he's only going to give dust specks to 1x10^14 minus one people. We breath a huge sigh of relief - you don't have to torture anybody, because the math worked out in your favor by a vanishingly small fraction! Then Omega suddenly tells you he's changing the deal - he's going to be putting dust speck in YOUR eye, as well.
Deciding, at this point, that you now have to torture somebody is equivalent to denying that you have the choice to say, "I can ignore this dust speck if it means torturing somebody." Bearing in mind that you are choosing to put dust specks in an exactly equal number of eyes as you were before, plus only your own.
My example above is merely extrapolating this case to the case where each individual can decide to opt out.
The correct response when Omega changes the deal is "Oh, come on! You're making me decide between two situations that are literally within a dust speck's worth of each other. Why bother me with such trivial questions?" Because that's what it is. You're not choosing between "dust speck in my eye" and "terrible thing happens". You're choosing between "terrible thing happens" and "infinitesimally less terrible thing happens, plus I have a dust speck in my eye."
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.