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blossom comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong
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Okey, I was trying to learn from this post but now I see that I have to try to explain stuff myself in order for this communication to become useful. When It comes to pain it is hard to explain why one person´s great suffering is worse than many suffering very very little if you don´t understand it by yourself. So let us change the currency from pain to money.
Let´s say that you and me need to fund a large plantage of algae in order to let the Earth´s population escape starvation due to lack of food. This project is of great importence for the whole world so we can force anyone to become a sponsor and this is good because we need the money FAST. We work for the whole world (read: Earth) and we want to minimze the damages from our actions. This project is really expensive however... Should we:
a) Take one dollar from every person around the world with a minimum wage that can still afford house, food etc. even if we take that one dollar?
or should we
b) Take all the money (instantly) from Denmark and watch it break down in bakruptcy?
Asking me it is obvious that we don´t want Denmark to go bankrupt just because it may annoy some people that they have to sacriface 1 dollar.
In this case I do not disagree with you. The number of people on earth is simply not large enough.
But if you asked me whether to take money from 3^^^3 people compared to throwing Denmark into bankruptcy, I would choose the latter.
Math should override intuition. So unless you give me a model that you can convince me of that is more reasonable than adding up costs/utilities, I don't think you will change my mind.
Now I see what is fundamentally wrong with the article and you´re reasoning from MY perspective. You don´t seem to understand the difference between a permanent sacriface and a temporary.
If we subsitute the spec dust with index fingers for example, I agree that it is reasonable to think that killing one person is far better than to have 3 billion (we don´t need 3^^^3 for this one) persons lose their index fingers. Because that is a permanent sacriface. At least for now we can´t have fingers grow out just like that. To get dust in your eye at the other hand, is only temporary. You will get over it real quick and forget all about it. But 50 years of torture is something that you will never fully heal from and it will ruin a persons life and cause permanent damage.