Suppose some fraction of the 3^^^3 dropped out. How many dust specks would you be willing to take? Two? Ten? A thousand? A million? A billion? That's half a millimeter in diameter, now, and we're only at 10^9. How about 10^12? 10^15? 10^18? We're around half a meter in diameter now, approaching or exceeding the size of a football, and we've not even reached 3^^4 - and remember that 3^^^3 is 3^^3^^3 = 3^^7,625,597,484,987.
What, you think that all of the 3^^^3 will go for it? All of them, chipping in to save one person who was getting 50 years of torture? In a universe with 3^^^3 people in it, how many people do you think are being tortured? Our planet has had around 10^11 human beings in history. If we say that only one of those 10^11 people were ever tortured for 50 years in history - or even that there were a one-in-a-thousand chance of it, one in 10^14 - how many people would be tortured for 50 years among the more than 3^^^3 we are positing? And do you think that all 3^^^3 will choose the same one you did?
Would you consider think that, perhaps, one dust speck is a bit much to pay to save one part in 3^^^3 of a victim?
Would you consider think that, perhaps, one dust speck is a bit much to pay to save one part in 3^^^3 of a victim?
When multiple agents coordinate, their decision delivers the whole outcome, not a part of it. Depending on what you decide, everyone who reasons similarly will decide. Thus, you have the absolute control over what outcome to bring about, even if you are only one of a gazillion like-minded voters.
Here, you decide whether to save one person, at the cost of harming 3^^^3 people. This is not equivalent to saving 1/3^^^3 of a person at the cost ...
"What's the worst that can happen?" goes the optimistic saying. It's probably a bad question to ask anyone with a creative imagination. Let's consider the problem on an individual level: it's not really the worst that can happen, but would nonetheless be fairly bad, if you were horribly tortured for a number of years. This is one of the worse things that can realistically happen to one person in today's world.
What's the least bad, bad thing that can happen? Well, suppose a dust speck floated into your eye and irritated it just a little, for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make you notice before you blink and wipe away the dust speck.
For our next ingredient, we need a large number. Let's use 3^^^3, written in Knuth's up-arrow notation:
3^^^3 is an exponential tower of 3s which is 7,625,597,484,987 layers tall. You start with 1; raise 3 to the power of 1 to get 3; raise 3 to the power of 3 to get 27; raise 3 to the power of 27 to get 7625597484987; raise 3 to the power of 7625597484987 to get a number much larger than the number of atoms in the universe, but which could still be written down in base 10, on 100 square kilometers of paper; then raise 3 to that power; and continue until you've exponentiated 7625597484987 times. That's 3^^^3. It's the smallest simple inconceivably huge number I know.
Now here's the moral dilemma. If neither event is going to happen to you personally, but you still had to choose one or the other:
Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?
I think the answer is obvious. How about you?