Unknown3 comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong
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Paul : "Slapping each of 100 people once each is not the same as slapping one person 100 times."
This is absolutely true. But no one has said that these two things are equal. The point is that it is possible to assign each case a value, and these values are comparable: either you prefer to slap each of 100 people once, or you prefer to slap one person 100 times. And once you begin assigning preferences, in the end you must admit that the dust specks, distributed over multiple people, are preferable to the torture in one individual. Your only alternatives to this will be to contradict your own preferences, or to admit to some absurd preference such as "I would rather torture a million people for 49 years than one person for 50."