Who says that we have consistent and complete preference orderings?
Who says you need them? The question wasn’t to quantify an exact balance. You just need to be sure enough to make the decision that one side outweighs the other for the numbers involved.
By my values, all else equal, for all x between 1 millisecond and fifty years, 10^1000 people being tortured for time x is worse than one person being tortured for time x*2. Would you disagree?
So, 10^1000 people tortured for (fifty years)/2 is worse than one person tortured for fifty years.
Then, 10^2000 people tortured for (fifty years)/4 is worse than one person tortured for fifty years.
You see where I’m going with this. Do something similar with the dust specs and unless I prefer countless people getting countless years of intense dust harassment to one person getting a millisecond of pain, I vote torture.
I recognize this is my opinion and relies on your c) it is a moral fact that we ought to select the world with more pleasure and less pain not being hopelessly outweighed by another criteria. I think this is definitely a worthwhile thing to debate and that your input would be extremely valuable.
Who says that we have consistent and complete preference orderings?
Who says you need them? The question wasn’t to quantify an exact balance. You just need to be sure enough to make the decision that one side outweighs the other for the numbers involved.
By my values, all else equal, for all x between 1 millisecond and fifty years, 10^1000 people being tortured for time x is worse than one person being tortured for time x*2. Would you disagree?
So, 10^1000 people tortured for (fifty years)/2 is worse than one person tortured for fifty years.
Then, 10^2000 people tortured for (fifty years)/4 is worse than one person tortured for fifty years.
You see where I’m going with this. Do something similar with the dust specs and unless I prefer countless people getting countless years of intense dust harassment to one person getting a millisecond of pain, I vote torture.
I recognize this is my opinion and relies on your c) it is a moral fact that we ought to select the world with more pleasure and less pain not being hopelessly outweighed by another criteria. I think this is definitely a worthwhile thing to debate and that your input would be extremely valuable.