> For those who would pick TORTURE, what about Vassar's universes of agonium? Say a googolplex-persons' worth of agonium for a googolplex years.

If you mean would I condemn all conscious beings to a googolplex of torture to avoid universal annihilation from a big "dust crunch" my answer is still probably yes. The alternative is universal doom. At least the tortured masses might have some small chance of finding a solution to their problem at some point. Or at least a googolplex years might pass leaving some future civilization free to prosper. The dust is absolute doom for all potential futures.

Of course, I'm assuming that 3^^^3 conscious beings are unlikely to ever exist and so that dust would be applied over and over to the same people causing the universe to be filled with dust. Maybe this isn't how the mechanics of the problem work.