(So this is just about the first real post I made here and I kinda have stage fright posting here, so if its horribly bad and uninteresting and so please tell me what I did wrong, ok? Also, I’ve been frying to figure out the spelling and grammar and failed, sorry about that.) (Disclaimer: This post is humorous, and not everything should be taken all to seriously! As someone (Boxo) reviewing it put it: “it’s like a contest between 3^^^3 and common sense!”)
1) My analysis of http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/
Lets say 1 second of torture is −1 000 000 utilions. Because there are about 100 000 seconds in a day, and about 20 000 days in 50 years, that makes −2*10^15 utilions.
Now, I’m tempted to say a dust speck has no negative utility at all, but I’m not COMPLETELY certain I’m right. Let’s say there’s a 1/1000 000 chance I’m wrong, in which case the dust speck is −1 utilion. That means the the dust speck option is −1 10^-6 * 3^^^3, which is approximately −3^^^3.
-3^^^3 < −10^15, therefore I chose the torture.
2) The ant speck problem.
The ant speck problem is like the dust speck problem, except instead of being 3^^^3 humans that get specks in their eyes, it’s 3^^^3 ordinary ants, and it’s a billion humans being tortured for a millennia.
Now, I’m bigoted against ants, and pretty sure I don’t value them as much as humans. In fact, with 99.9999% certain I don’t value ants suffering at all. The remaining probability space is dominated by that moral value is equal to 1000^[the number of neurons in the entity’s brain] for brains similar to earth type animals. Humans have about 10^11, ants have about 10^4 That means an ant is worth about 10^(-10^14) as much as a human, if it’s worth anything at all.
Now lets multiply this together… −1 utilions 10^(-10^14) discount 1/10^6 that ants are worth anything at all 1/10^6 that dust specks are bad 3^^^3… That’s about −3^^^3!
And for the other side: −10^15 for 50 years. Multiply that with 20, and then with the billion… about −10^25.
-3^^^3 < −10^25, therefore I chose the torture!
((*I do not actually think this, the numbers are for the sake of argument and have little to do with my actual beliefs at all.))
3) Obvious derived problems: There are variations of the ant problem, can you work out and post what if...
The ants will only be tortured if also all the protons in the earth decays within one second of the choice, the torture however is certain?
Instead of ants, you have bacteria, with behaviour as complicated as to be equivalent of 1⁄100 neurons?
The source you get the info from is unreliable, there’s only a 1/googol chance the specks could actual happen, while the torture, again, is certain?
All of the above?
Hi.