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dxu comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong
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You're misunderstanding. It has nothing to do with time -- it's not a time line. It means the dust motes are infinitesimal, while the torture is finite. A finite sum of infinitesimals is always infinitesimal.
Not that you really need to use a math analogy here. The point is just that there is a qualitative difference between specs of dust and torture. They're incommensurable. You cannot divide torture by spec of dust, because neither one is a number to start with.
This is an interesting claim. Either it implies that the human brain is capable of detecting infinitesimal differences in utility, or else it implies that you should have no preference between having a dust speck in your eye and not having one in your eye.