homunq comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: homunq 21 February 2009 01:37:00AM 0 points [-]

Tim: You're right - if you are a reasonably attractive and charismatic person. Otherwise, the question (from both sides) is worse than the dust speck.

(Asking people also puts you in the picture. You must like to spend eternity asking people a silly question, and learning all possible linguistic vocalizations in order to do so. There are many fewer vocalizations than possible languages, and many fewer possible human languages than 3^^^3. You will be spending more time going from one person of the SAME language to another, at 1 femtosecond per journey, than you would spend learning all possible human languages. That would be true even if the people were fully shuffled by language - just 1 femtosecond each for all the times when coincidence gives you two of the same language in a row. 3^^^3 is that big.)