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wedrifid comments on Do the people behind the veil of ignorance vote for "specks"? - Less Wrong
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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.
The idea that multiplying suffering by the number of sufferers yields a correct and valid total-suffering value is not fundamental truth, it is just a naive extrapolation of our intuitions that should help guide our decisions.
Let's consider a Modified Torture versus Specks scenario: You are given the same choice as in the canonical problem, except you are also given the opportunity to collect polling data from every single one of the 3^^^3 individuals before you make your decision. You formulate the following queries:
"Would you rather experience the mild distraction of a dust speck in your eye, or allow someone else to be tortured for fifty years?"
"Would you rather be tortured for fifty years, or have someone else experience the mild discomfort of a dust speck in their eye?"
You do not mention, in either query, that you are being faced by the Torture versus Specks dilemma. You are only allowing the 3^^^3 to consider themselves and one hypothetical other.
You get the polling results back instantly. (Let's make things simple and assume we live in a universe without clinical psychopathy.) The vast majority of respondents have chosen the "obviously correct" option.
Now you have to make your decisions knowing that the entire universe totally wouldn't mind having dust specks in exchange for preventing suffering for one other person. If that doesn't change your decision ... something is wrong. I'm not saying something is wrong with the decision so much as something is wrong with your decision theory.
I'm not entirely convinced by the rest of your argument, but
The idea that multiplying suffering by the number of sufferers yields a correct and valid total-suffering value is not fundamental truth, it is just a naive extrapolation of our intuitions that should help guide our decisions.
Is, far and away, the most intelligent thing I have ever seen anyone write on this damn paradox.
Come on, people. The fact that naive preference utilitarianism gives us torture rather than dust specks is not some result we have to live with, it's an indication that the decision theory is horribly, horribly wrong,
It is beyond me how people can look at dust specks and torture and draw the conclusion they do. In my mind, the most obvious, immediate objection is that utility does not aggregate additively across people in any reasonable ethical system. This is true no matter how big the numbers are. Instead it aggregates by minimum, or maybe multiplicatively (especially if we normalize everyone's utility function to [0,1]).
Sorry for all the emphasis, but I am sick and tired of supposed rationalists using math to reach the reprehensible conclusion and then claiming it must be right because math. It's the epitome of Spock "rationality".
I would say, instead, that it gives a valid total-suffering value but that said value is not necessarily what is important. It is not how I extrapolate my intuitive aversion to suffering, for example.
I would say the same but substitute 'torture' for 'reprehensible'. Using math in that way is essentially begging the question - the important decision is in which math to choose as a guess at our utility function after all. But at the same time I don't consider choosing torture to be reprehensible. Because the fact that there are 3^<lotsofem>^3 dust specks really does matter.