Unknown3 comments on The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism" - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 January 2008 04:29PM

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Comment author: Unknown3 30 January 2008 07:55:00PM 0 points [-]

Ben P: the arrangement of the scale is meant to show that the further you move the lever toward 3^^^3 dust specks, the worse things get. The torture decreases linearly simply because there's no reason to decrease it by more; the number of people increases in the way that it does because of the nature of 3^^^3 (i.e. the number is large enough to allow for this). The more we can increase it at each stop, the more obvious it is that we shouldn't move the lever at all, but rather we should leave it at torturing 1 person 50 years.