the theory would also imply that an infinite amount of irritation is not as bad as a tiny amount of pain, which doesn’t seem to be true)
I’m increasingly convinced that the whole Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario is sparking way more heat than light, but...
I can imagine situations where an infinite amount of some type of irritation integrated to something equivalent to some finite but non-tiny amount of pain. I can even imagine situations where that amount was a matter of preference: if you asked someone what finite level of pain they’d accept to prevent some permanent and annoying but non-painful condition, I’d expect the answers to differ significantly. Granted, “lifelong” is not “infinite”, and there’s hyperbolic discounting and various other issues to correct for, but even after these corrections a finite answer doesn’t seem obviously wrong.
Well, for one thing, pain is not negative utility ….
Pain is a specific set of physiological processes. Recent discoveries suggest that it shares some brain-space with other phenomena such as social rejection and math anxiety, which are phenomenologically distinct.
It is also phenomenologically distinct from the sensations of disgust, grief, shame, or dread — which are all unpleasant and inspire us to avoid their causes. Irritation, anxiety, and many other unpleasant sensations can take away from our ability to experience pleasure; many of them can also make us less effective at achieving our own goals.
In place of an individual experiencing “50 years of torture” in terms of physiological pain, we might consider 50 years of frustration, akin to the myth of Sisyphus or Tantalus; or 50 years of nightmare, akin to that inflicted on Alex Burgess by Morpheus in The Sandman ….
I’m increasingly convinced that the whole Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario is sparking way more heat than light, but...
I can imagine situations where an infinite amount of some type of irritation integrated to something equivalent to some finite but non-tiny amount of pain. I can even imagine situations where that amount was a matter of preference: if you asked someone what finite level of pain they’d accept to prevent some permanent and annoying but non-painful condition, I’d expect the answers to differ significantly. Granted, “lifelong” is not “infinite”, and there’s hyperbolic discounting and various other issues to correct for, but even after these corrections a finite answer doesn’t seem obviously wrong.
Well, for one thing, pain is not negative utility ….
Pain is a specific set of physiological processes. Recent discoveries suggest that it shares some brain-space with other phenomena such as social rejection and math anxiety, which are phenomenologically distinct.
It is also phenomenologically distinct from the sensations of disgust, grief, shame, or dread — which are all unpleasant and inspire us to avoid their causes. Irritation, anxiety, and many other unpleasant sensations can take away from our ability to experience pleasure; many of them can also make us less effective at achieving our own goals.
In place of an individual experiencing “50 years of torture” in terms of physiological pain, we might consider 50 years of frustration, akin to the myth of Sisyphus or Tantalus; or 50 years of nightmare, akin to that inflicted on Alex Burgess by Morpheus in The Sandman ….