Robin, could you explain your reasoning. I’m curious.
Humans get barely noticeable “dust speck equivalent” events so often in their lives that the number of people in Eliezer’s post is irrelevant; it’s simply not going to change their lives, even if it’s a gazillion lives, even with a number bigger than Eliezer’s (even considering the “butterfly effect”, you can’t say if the dust speck is going to change them for the better or worse—but with 50 years of torture, you know it’s going to be for the worse).
Subjectively for these people, it’s going to be lost in the static and probably won’t even be remembered a few seconds after the event. Torture won’t be lost in static, and it won’t be forgotten (if survived).
The alternative to torture is so mild and inconsequential, even if applied to a mind-boggling number of people, that it’s almost like asking: Would you rather torture that guy or not?
The dust speck is described as “barely enough to make you notice”, so however many people it would happen to, it seems better than even something a lot less worse than 50 years of horrible torture. There are so many irritating things that a human barely notices in his/her life, what’s an extra dust speck?
I think I’d trade the dust specks for even a kick in the groin.
But hey, maybe I’m missing something here...