Ben_Jones comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 January 2008 06:00PM

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Comment author: Ben_Jones 23 January 2008 01:07:39PM 2 points [-]

Unknown,

such that a trillion people suffering for that length of time or that degree of pain would always be preferable to one person suffering for one second longer or suffering a pain ever so slightly greater.

As I wrote yesterday, a dust mote registers exactly zero on my torture scale, and torture registers fundamentally off the scale (not just off the top, off) on my dust mote scale. Torture can be placed, if not discretely quantified, on my torture scale. Dust motes can not. If it's a short enough space of time that you could convince me N dust motes would be worse, I'd say your idea of torture is different from mine.