It absolutely assumes that the two are comparable, and most of the smarter objections to it that I’ve seen invoke some kind of filtering function to zero out the impact of any particular dust speck on some level of comparison.
There are a number of objections to this that you could raise in practice: given a random distribution of starting values, for example, an additional dust speck would be sufficient to push a small percentage, but an unimaginably huge quantity, of victims’ subjective suffering over any threshold of significance we feel like choosing. I’m not too impressed with any of these responses—they generally seem to leverage special pleading on some level—but I’ve got to admit that they don’t have anything wrong with them that the filtering argument doesn’t.
Argh, I have accidentally reported your comment instead of replying. I did wonder why it asks me if I’m sure… Sorry.
It does indeed appear that the only rational approach is for them to be treated as comparable. I was merely trying to suggest a possible underlying basis for people consistently picking dust specks, regardless of the hugeness of the numbers involved.
It absolutely assumes that the two are comparable, and most of the smarter objections to it that I’ve seen invoke some kind of filtering function to zero out the impact of any particular dust speck on some level of comparison.
There are a number of objections to this that you could raise in practice: given a random distribution of starting values, for example, an additional dust speck would be sufficient to push a small percentage, but an unimaginably huge quantity, of victims’ subjective suffering over any threshold of significance we feel like choosing. I’m not too impressed with any of these responses—they generally seem to leverage special pleading on some level—but I’ve got to admit that they don’t have anything wrong with them that the filtering argument doesn’t.
Welcome to Less Wrong, by the way.
Argh, I have accidentally reported your comment instead of replying. I did wonder why it asks me if I’m sure… Sorry.
It does indeed appear that the only rational approach is for them to be treated as comparable. I was merely trying to suggest a possible underlying basis for people consistently picking dust specks, regardless of the hugeness of the numbers involved.
You did report it; I’ve ignored the report and now it is gone.