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shibl comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong
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The obvious answer is that torture is preferable.
If you have to pick yourself a chance of 1/3^^^3 of 50 years torture vs the dust spec you will pick the torture.
We actually do this every day: we eat foods that can poison us rather than be hungry, we cross the road rather than stay at home, etc.
Imagine there is a safety improvement to your car that will cost 0.0001 cent but will save you from an event that will happen once in 1000 universe lifetimes would you pay for it?
I don't think it's very controversial that TORTURE is the right choice if you're maximizing overall net utility (or in your example, maximizing expected utility). But some of us would still choose SPECKS.