This question has a natural upper bound, determined by the preexisting torture/fun distribution in the world. Most people would hold that it’s morally acceptable to make the world larger by adding more people whose life outcomes will be drawn from the same probability distribution as the people alive today. If presently the average person has X0 fun, and fraction T0 of people are tortured without you being able to stop it, then you should press the button if X>X0 and N>1/T0.
A lower bound would presumably be the amount of fun the show 24 provides on average, with N being the ratio of the shows’ viewers to prisoners rendered so they could be tortured. (Take That, other side!)
You’re assuming that people make decisions consistently. I know people are inconsistent, so I’m only interested in their answers to this concrete question, not in what would be “logically implied” by the rest of their behavior.
This question has a natural upper bound, determined by the preexisting torture/fun distribution in the world. Most people would hold that it’s morally acceptable to make the world larger by adding more people whose life outcomes will be drawn from the same probability distribution as the people alive today. If presently the average person has X0 fun, and fraction T0 of people are tortured without you being able to stop it, then you should press the button if X>X0 and N>1/T0.
A lower bound would presumably be the amount of fun the show 24 provides on average, with N being the ratio of the shows’ viewers to prisoners rendered so they could be tortured. (Take That, other side!)
You’re assuming that people make decisions consistently. I know people are inconsistent, so I’m only interested in their answers to this concrete question, not in what would be “logically implied” by the rest of their behavior.