I have been reading less wrong about 6 month but this is my first post. I'm not an expert but an interested amateur. I read this post about 3 weeks ago and thought it was a joke. After working through replies and following links, I get it is a serious question with serious consequences in the world today. I don’t think my comments duplicate others already in the thread so here goes…

Let’s call this a “one blink” discomfort (it comes and goes in a blink) and let’s say that on average each person gets one every 10 minutes during their waking hours. In reality it is probably more, but you forget about such things almost as quick as they happen. If it is “right” to send one person to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 from a one blink discomfort, it is right to send 6 people per hour to the same fate for each of the sixteen waking hours per day, for a total of 96 people per day and 35,040 people each year.

And if it is right to send 35,040 to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 people for a single year from all one blink discomforts, then it is right to send another 35,040 to the same fate in order to save 3^^^3 people from all two blink discomforts, assuming each person on average get a two blink discomfort (it comes and goes in two blinks) thrice per hour. We have now saved the multiverse from all one and two bink discomforts for one year at the cost of sending 70,080 people to 50 years torture.

By the time the first person comes out of torture 50 years later, over 3.5 million people will have followed them into the torture chambers to save everyone else from discomforts lasting two blinks or less. If you follow the logic through from one blink up to each person gets one mild cold or some such per year that inflicts 2 days of discomfort, and you are sending untold trillions to 50 years torture every year. It seems to me a significant minority of the population would be in the torture chambers at any one time to save the majority from discomfort.

My question to the torturers is how far are you willing to take your logic before you look at yourself in the mirror and see a monster?