What are your contrarian views?

Metus

As per a recent comment this thread is meant to voice contrarian opinions, that is anything this community tends not to agree with. Thus I ask you to post your contrarian views and upvote anything you do not agree with based on personal beliefs. Spam and trolling still needs to be downvoted.

Granted. Let's take an example of pain that would be decidedly not roundable to zero. Say, 3^^^3 paper cuts, with no further consequences. Still preferable to torture.

(What I'm about to say is I think the same as Jiro has been saying, but I have the impression that you aren't quite responding to what I think Jiro has been saying. So either you're misunderstanding Jiro, in which case another version of the argument might help, or I'm misunderstanding Jiro, in which case I'd be interested in your response to my comments as well as his/hers :-).)

It seems to me pretty obvious that one can construct a scale that goes something like this:

a stubbed toe
a paper cut
a painfully grazed knee
...
a broken ankle
a broken leg
a mul

... (read more)

4Jiro12y

Presumably, you still think that large amounts of pain can be added up. In that case, that must have a threshold too; something that causes a certain amount of pain cannot be added up, while something that causes a very very slightly greater amount of pain can add up. That implies that you would prefer 3^^^3 people having pain at level 1 to one person having pain of level 1.00001, as long as 1 is not over the threshold for adding up but 1.00001 is. Are you willing to accept that conclusion? (Incidentally, for a real world version, replace "torture" with "driving somewhere and accidentally running someone over with your car" and "specks" with "3^^^3 incidences of not being able to do something because you refuse to drive". Do you still prefer specks to torture?)

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What are your contrarian views?

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What are your contrarian views?

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