Roho comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 October 2007 02:50AM

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Comment author: Roho 25 March 2015 07:04:26PM 4 points [-]

Okay, so let's zoom in here. What is preferable?

Torturing 1 person for 60 seconds

Torturing 100 person for 59 seconds

Torturing 10000 person for 58 seconds

etc.

Kind of a paradox of the heap. How many seconds of torture are still torture?

And 10^30 is really a lot of people. That's what Eliezer meant with "scope insensitivity". And all of them would be really grateful if you spared them their second of pain. Could be worth a minute of pain?