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ArisKatsaris comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong
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Wait, does the original question simplify to:
"[There exists 3^^^3 people] AND [of the set of all people there exists one that is tortured for 50 years OR of the set of all people, all get a mote of dust in the eye; which would you prefer]"?
Because that would be quite different to:
"[of the set of all people there exists one person who will be tortured for 50 years] OR [there exists 3^^^3 people AND each of them gets a mote of dust in the eye]; which would you prefer?"
I answered the latter.
The point of the question was to ask us to judge between the disutility of many people dust specked and a single person tortured, not to place a value on whether 3^^^3 existences is itself a bad or a good thing.
So, kinda of the former interpretation, except that the "3^^^3 people" part is merely the setting that enables the question, not really the point of the question...
EDIT: Btw, since I'm an anti-specker, I tried to calculate an upper bound once, for number of specks... It ended up being about 1.2 * 10^20 dust specks
Surely the incomprehensibly large number is part of the point of the question, otherwise why not use the set of all existing people being dust specked? ~7 billion dustmoted vs. 1 tortured?
3^^^3 people is more sentient mass than could physically fit in our universe.
Edit: Here's how I imagined that playing out: 3^^^3 people are brought into existence, displacing all the matter of the universe. Which, while still momentarily conscious, each gets a mote of this matter in their eye, causing minor discomfort. They then all immediately die, and in the following eternity their bodies and the remainder of the universe collapses to a single point.
Because 7 billion dust specks aren't enough. Obviously.
The point of the question is an extremely large number of tiny disutilities compared to a single vast disutility. When you're imagining 3^^^3 deaths instead and the destruction of the universe, you're kinda missing the point.
What about 7 billion stubbed toes?
A few posts up, I've already linked to some calculations about various scenarios. You can look at them, if you are really genuinely interested - but why would you be? It's the principle of the thing that's interesting, not some inexact numbers one roughly calculates.