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

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

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Comment author: Ben_P 30 January 2008 08:11:00PM 0 points [-]

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)

I don't see how that follows. Even the progression from the first setting to the second setting seems arbitrary. You've established a progression from one scenario (torturing a person for 50 years) to another (3^^^3 dust specks) but to me it just seems like one possible progression. I see no reason to set up the intermediate stages like you have.

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.

That's only true up to a certain point. If I had to make a graph of the harm caused by the settings it would probably look like a parabola with what would look almost like an asymptote near setting 1.