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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Torture vs Dust Specks Yet Again - Less Wrong
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Yes, you can make assumptions that get around this. You then have to assume a lot of things about the competence of everyone involved, etc. You could also assume you have read certain Nazi research papers that prove that a person of this size is guaranteed to safely stop a trolley of that size on such-and-such slope and terrain. My point here is mainly to grump about thought experiments that demand I turn off all the doubt and paranoia etc. that are key to making reasonable decisions in the real world.
My true rejection of torture over dust specks comes from not being a utilitarian at all (and therefore doesn't really belong in this discussion).
A thought experiment is a lot like a regular experiment, in that you need to isolate the variables being tested if you actually care about answering the question. All of those other factors (i.e. societal implications of torture, the physics which might allow you to inconvenience 3^^^3 people, the effects of mass eye irritation on the annual GDP of Peru) are all irrelevant to the issue; is an incomprehensibly huge amount of harm which is very widely distributed preferable to a large amount of harm inflicted on one person? And, in either case, why?
In other words, what would your answer be in the Least Convenient Possible World?