All of Harbor's Comments + Replies

New situation: 3^^^3 people being tortured for 50 years, or one person getting tortured for 50 years and getting a single speck of dust in their eye. By do unto others, I should, of course, torture the innumerably vast number of people, since I'd rather be tortured for 50 years than be tortured for 50 years and get dust in my eye.

Perhaps that is how some people who prefer TORTURE to DUST SPECKS are thinking, but I see no reason to think it's all of them, and I am pretty sure some of them have better reasons than the rather strawmanny one you are proposing. For instance, consider the following: * Which would you prefer: one person tortured for 50 years or a trillion people tortured for 50 years minus one microsecond? * I guess you prefer the first. So do I. * Which would you prefer: a trillion people tortured for 50 years minus one microsecond, or a trillion trillion people tortured for 50 years minus two microseconds? * I guess you prefer the first. So do I. * ... Now repeat this until we get to ... * Which would you prefer: N/10^12 people (note: N is very very large, but also vastly smaller than 3^^^3) tortured for one day plus one microsecond, or N people tortured for one day? * I am pretty sure you prefer the first option in every case up to here. Now perhaps microseconds are too large, so let's adjust a little: * Which would you prefer: N people tortured for one day, or 10^12*N people tortured for one day minus one nanosecond? * ... and continue iterating -- I bet you prefer the first option in every case -- until we get to ... * Which would you prefer, M/10^12 people tortured for ten seconds plus one nanosecond, or M people tortured for ten seconds? (M is much much larger than N -- but still vastly smaller than 3^^^3.) * I am pretty sure you still prefer the first case every time. Now, once the times get much shorter than this it may be difficult to say whether something is really torture exactly, so let's start adjusting the severity as well. Let's first of all replace the rather ill-defined "torture" with something less ambiguous. * Which would you prefer, M people tortured for ten seconds, or 10^12*M people tortured for 9 seconds and then kicked really hard on the kneecap but definitely not hard enough to cause permanent damage? * The intention is that the t

But you're also potentially causing a mild benefit to a hypothetically infinitely higher number of people than 3^^^3.