I’m not sure I’m understanding your reasoning here. It seems like you’re simply thinking about people’s preferences for a dust speck in the eye, relative to their preferences for torture, without reference to how many dust specks and how much torture… is that right?
If so, that doesn’t seem to capture the general intuitive view. Intuitively, I strongly prefer losing a finger to losing an arm, but I prefer 1 person losing an arm to a million people losing a finger. (Or, put differently, I prefer a one-in-a-million chance of losing my arm to the certainty of losing a finger.) Quantity seems to matter.
I’m not sure I’m understanding your reasoning here. It seems like you’re simply thinking about people’s preferences for a dust speck in the eye, relative to their preferences for torture, without reference to how many dust specks and how much torture… is that right?
If so, that doesn’t seem to capture the general intuitive view. Intuitively, I strongly prefer losing a finger to losing an arm, but I prefer 1 person losing an arm to a million people losing a finger. (Or, put differently, I prefer a one-in-a-million chance of losing my arm to the certainty of losing a finger.) Quantity seems to matter.