You are making assumption the feeling caused by having dust spec in your eye is in same category as feeling of being tortured for 50 years.
Would you rather have googolplex people drink a glass of water or have one person tortured for 50 years? Would you rather have googolplex people put on their underwear in the morning or have one person tortured for 50 years? If you put feeling of dust spec in same category as feelings arising from 50 years of torture, you can put pretty much anything in that category and you end up preferring one person being tortured for 50 years to to almost any physical phenomena that would happen to googolplex people.
And even if it’s in same category? I bet that just having a thought causes some extremely small activity in brain areas related to pain. Multiply that by large enough number and the total pain value will be greater than pain value of person being tortured for 50 years! I would hope that there is no one who would prefer one person being tortured for 50 years to 3^^^3 persons having a thought...
You are dodging an important part of the question.
The “dust speck” was originally adopted as a convenient label for the smallest imaginable unit of disutility. If I believe that disutility exists at all and that events can be ranked by how much disutility they cause, it seems to follows that there’s some “smallest amount of disutility I’m willing to talk about.” If it’s not a dust speck for you, fine; pick a different example: stubbing your toe, maybe. Or if that’s not bad enough to appear on your radar screen, cutting your toe off. The particular doesn’t matter.
Whatever particular small problem you choose, then ask yourself how you compare small-problem-to-lots-of-people with large-problem-to-fewer-people.
If disutilities add across people, then for some number of people I arrive at the counterintuitive conclusion that 50 years of torture to one person is preferable to small-problem-to-lots-of-people. And if I resist the temptation to flinch, I can either learn something about my intuitions and how they break down when faced with very large and very small numbers, or I can endorse my intuitions and reject the idea that disutilities add across people.
Whatever particular small problem you choose, then ask yourself how you compare small-problem-to-lots-of-people with large-problem-to-fewer-people.
If disutilities add across people, then for some number of people I arrive at the counterintuitive conclusion that 50 years of torture to one person is preferable to small-problem-to-lots-of-people.
It is counterintuitive, and at least for me it’s REALLY counterintuitive. On wether to save 400 people or 500 people with 90% change it didn’t take me many seconds to choose second option, but this feels very different. Now that you put it in terms of unit of disutily isntead of dust specks it is easier to think about, and on some level it does feel like torture of one person would be the logical choice. And then part of my mind starts screamin this is wrong.
Thanks for your reply though, I’ll have to think about all this.
I suspect it’s really counterintuitive to most people. That’s why it gets so much discussion, and in particular why so many people fight the hypothetical so hard. The “yeah, that makes sense, but then my brain starts screaming” reaction is pretty common.
And yes, I agree that if we compare things that are closer together in scale, our intuitions don’t break down quite so dramatically.
You are making assumption the feeling caused by having dust spec in your eye is in same category as feeling of being tortured for 50 years.
Would you rather have googolplex people drink a glass of water or have one person tortured for 50 years? Would you rather have googolplex people put on their underwear in the morning or have one person tortured for 50 years? If you put feeling of dust spec in same category as feelings arising from 50 years of torture, you can put pretty much anything in that category and you end up preferring one person being tortured for 50 years to to almost any physical phenomena that would happen to googolplex people.
And even if it’s in same category? I bet that just having a thought causes some extremely small activity in brain areas related to pain. Multiply that by large enough number and the total pain value will be greater than pain value of person being tortured for 50 years! I would hope that there is no one who would prefer one person being tortured for 50 years to 3^^^3 persons having a thought...
You are dodging an important part of the question.
The “dust speck” was originally adopted as a convenient label for the smallest imaginable unit of disutility. If I believe that disutility exists at all and that events can be ranked by how much disutility they cause, it seems to follows that there’s some “smallest amount of disutility I’m willing to talk about.” If it’s not a dust speck for you, fine; pick a different example: stubbing your toe, maybe. Or if that’s not bad enough to appear on your radar screen, cutting your toe off. The particular doesn’t matter.
Whatever particular small problem you choose, then ask yourself how you compare small-problem-to-lots-of-people with large-problem-to-fewer-people.
If disutilities add across people, then for some number of people I arrive at the counterintuitive conclusion that 50 years of torture to one person is preferable to small-problem-to-lots-of-people. And if I resist the temptation to flinch, I can either learn something about my intuitions and how they break down when faced with very large and very small numbers, or I can endorse my intuitions and reject the idea that disutilities add across people.
It is counterintuitive, and at least for me it’s REALLY counterintuitive. On wether to save 400 people or 500 people with 90% change it didn’t take me many seconds to choose second option, but this feels very different. Now that you put it in terms of unit of disutily isntead of dust specks it is easier to think about, and on some level it does feel like torture of one person would be the logical choice. And then part of my mind starts screamin this is wrong.
Thanks for your reply though, I’ll have to think about all this.
I suspect it’s really counterintuitive to most people. That’s why it gets so much discussion, and in particular why so many people fight the hypothetical so hard. The “yeah, that makes sense, but then my brain starts screaming” reaction is pretty common.
And yes, I agree that if we compare things that are closer together in scale, our intuitions don’t break down quite so dramatically.