Whatever particular small problem you choose, then ask yourself how you compare small-problem-to-lots-of-people with large-problem-to-fewer-people. If disutilities add across people, then for some number of people I arrive at the counterintuitive conclusion that 50 years of torture to one person is preferable to small-problem-to-lots-of-people.
It is counterintuitive, and at least for me it’s REALLY counterintuitive. On wether to save 400 people or 500 people with 90% change it didn’t take me many seconds to choose second option, but this feels very different. Now that you put it in terms of unit of disutily isntead of dust specks it is easier to think about, and on some level it does feel like torture of one person would be the logical choice. And then part of my mind starts screamin this is wrong.
Thanks for your reply though, I’ll have to think about all this.
You are making assumption the feeling caused by having dust spec in your eye is in same category as feeling of being tortured for 50 years.
Would you rather have googolplex people drink a glass of water or have one person tortured for 50 years? Would you rather have googolplex people put on their underwear in the morning or have one person tortured for 50 years? If you put feeling of dust spec in same category as feelings arising from 50 years of torture, you can put pretty much anything in that category and you end up preferring one person being tortured for 50 years to to almost any physical phenomena that would happen to googolplex people.
And even if it’s in same category? I bet that just having a thought causes some extremely small activity in brain areas related to pain. Multiply that by large enough number and the total pain value will be greater than pain value of person being tortured for 50 years! I would hope that there is no one who would prefer one person being tortured for 50 years to 3^^^3 persons having a thought...