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TheOtherDave comments on Torturing people for fun - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: cousin_it 14 February 2011 08:52PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 February 2011 09:30:18PM 6 points [-]

N=1,X= -(T+ epsilon) where T is the amount of antifun that a month of torture is.

But I really don't like that answer.

Some thinking out loud follows:

  • It's clear to me that I don't want to answer this question, for more or less the same reasons that I don't want to explain how much suffering I would be willing to impose upon you in exchange for X amount of fun for me. Which, of course, doesn't necessarily stop me from doing it, as long as I don't have to admit to it.

  • It's relatively clear to me that intuitively I'd give a different answer if I started from a small X and worked my way up by increments asking "Is this enough?" than if I started from a large X and worked my way down by increments asking "Is this too little?" From which I conclude that my intuitions on this subject are not reliable. Which I knew already from earlier conversations about "utilon-trade" scenarios.

  • It's clear to me that, while I have a fairly concrete understanding of torture, I have a very fuzzy understanding of fun. So when I say "X=-T + epsilon", I'm comparing concrete-torture-apples to fuzzily-imagined-fun-oranges, and I once again have no reliable intuitions.

  • If I screen off all of my real-world understanding of torture, so I can do a fuzzily-imagined-apples-to-fuzzily-imagined-apples comparison, it's a simple optimization question: is 1* (T+ epsilon) - 1* T positive? Why, yes it is. Great, do it! But the minute I unscreen that real-world understanding, I'm back to not wanting to answer that question.

  • What I'd prefer to do is unpack "-T amount of fun" into something equally concrete and do the comparison that way, but I don't seem to know how to do that.