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HungryHobo comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong
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Eliezer's point would have been valid, had he chosen almost anything other than momentary eye irritation. Even the momentary eye-irritation example would work if the eye irritation would lead to serious harm (e.g. eye inflammation and blindness) in a small proportion of those afflicted with the speck of dust. If the predicted outcome was millions of people going blind (and then you have to consider the resulting costs to society), then Eliezer is absolutely right: shut-up and do the math.
Imagine that you had the choice but once you've made that choice it will be applied the same way whenever someone will get tortured, magic intervenes, saves that one person and a googleplex other people get a spec in their eye.
it feels like it's not a big deal if it happens once or twice but imagine that across all the universes where it applies it ended up triggering 3,153,600,000 times, not even half the population of our world.
suddenly a googleplex of people are suffering constantly and half blinded most of the time.
it feels small when it happens once but the same has to apply when it happens again and again.