There are two ways you might be wrong. First, the neg-utility of dust specks could approach zero as distance increases, and the neg-utility of torture could approach a nonzero value that’s greater than the sum of infinitely many dust specks. Second, I could imagine accepting torture if the victim were sufficiently neurologically distant from me, say on the empathetic level of a fictional character. (Neurological distance is, more or less, the degree of our gut acknowledgement that a given person actually exists. The existence of a googolplex people is quite a leap of faith.) Take your pick.
I still believe proximity solves the dust speck and Pascal’s mugging parables. Well, not quite “solves”: proximity gives a convincing rationalization to the common-sense decision of a normal person that rationalism so cleverly argues against. Unfortunately scholastics without experiment can’t “solve” a problem in any larger sense.
I don’t see why anyone would think the dust speck problem is a problem. The simplest solution seems to be to acknowledge that suffering (and other utility, positive or negative) isn’t additive. Is there some argument that it is or should be?
Well, you’re right, but I wasn’t completely satisfied by such a blunt argument and went on to invent an extra layer of rationalization: justify non-additivity with proximity. Of course none of this matters except as a critique of the “shut up and multiply” maxim. I wouldn’t want to become a utility-additive mind without proximity modifiers. Maybe Eliezer would; who knows.
There are two ways you might be wrong. First, the neg-utility of dust specks could approach zero as distance increases, and the neg-utility of torture could approach a nonzero value that’s greater than the sum of infinitely many dust specks. Second, I could imagine accepting torture if the victim were sufficiently neurologically distant from me, say on the empathetic level of a fictional character. (Neurological distance is, more or less, the degree of our gut acknowledgement that a given person actually exists. The existence of a googolplex people is quite a leap of faith.) Take your pick.
I still believe proximity solves the dust speck and Pascal’s mugging parables. Well, not quite “solves”: proximity gives a convincing rationalization to the common-sense decision of a normal person that rationalism so cleverly argues against. Unfortunately scholastics without experiment can’t “solve” a problem in any larger sense.
I don’t see why anyone would think the dust speck problem is a problem. The simplest solution seems to be to acknowledge that suffering (and other utility, positive or negative) isn’t additive. Is there some argument that it is or should be?
Well, you’re right, but I wasn’t completely satisfied by such a blunt argument and went on to invent an extra layer of rationalization: justify non-additivity with proximity. Of course none of this matters except as a critique of the “shut up and multiply” maxim. I wouldn’t want to become a utility-additive mind without proximity modifiers. Maybe Eliezer would; who knows.