= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
khriys comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (596)
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.