...except that, if I’m right about the biases involved, the Speckists won’t be horrified at each other.
If you trade off thirty seconds of waterboarding for one person against twenty seconds of waterboarding for two people, you’re not visibly treading on a “sacred” value against a “mundane” value. It will rouse no moral indignation.
Indeed, if I’m right about the bias here, the Speckists will never be able to identify a discrete jump in utility across a single neuron firing, even though the transition from dust speck to torture can be broken up into a series of such jumps. There’s no difference of a single neuron firing that leads to the feeling of a comparison between a sacred and an unsacred value. The feeling of sacredness, itself, is quantitative and comes upon you in gradual increments of neurons firing—even though it supposedly describes a utility cliff with a slope higher than 3^^^3.
The prohibition against torture is clearly very sacred, and a dust speck is clearly very unsacred, so there must be a cliff sharper than 3^^^3 between them. But the distinction between one dust speck and two dust specks doesn’t seem to involve a comparison between a sacred and mundane value, and the distinction between 50 and 49.99 years of torture doesn’t seem to involve a comparison between a sacred and a mundane value...
So we’re left with cyclical prefrences. The one will trade 3 people suffering 49.99 years of torture for 1 person suffering 50 years of torture; after having previously traded 9 people suffering 49.98 years of torture for 3 people suffering 49.99 years of torture; and so on back to the starting point where it’s better for 3^999999999 people to feel two dust specks than for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck; right after, a moment before, having traded one person suffering 50 years of torture for 3^1000000000 people feeling one dust speck.
I think it’s worst for 3^999999999 people to feel two dust specks than for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck. After all the next step is that it is worst for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck than for 3^1000000001 people to feel less than one dust speck, which seem right.
I think that we “speckists” see injuries as poisons: they can destroy people lives only if they reach a certain concentration. So a greater but far more diluted pain can be less dangerous than a smaller but more concentrated one. 50 and 49 years of torture are still far over the threshold. One or two dust specks, on the other hand, are far below.
...except that, if I’m right about the biases involved, the Speckists won’t be horrified at each other.
If you trade off thirty seconds of waterboarding for one person against twenty seconds of waterboarding for two people, you’re not visibly treading on a “sacred” value against a “mundane” value. It will rouse no moral indignation.
Indeed, if I’m right about the bias here, the Speckists will never be able to identify a discrete jump in utility across a single neuron firing, even though the transition from dust speck to torture can be broken up into a series of such jumps. There’s no difference of a single neuron firing that leads to the feeling of a comparison between a sacred and an unsacred value. The feeling of sacredness, itself, is quantitative and comes upon you in gradual increments of neurons firing—even though it supposedly describes a utility cliff with a slope higher than 3^^^3.
The prohibition against torture is clearly very sacred, and a dust speck is clearly very unsacred, so there must be a cliff sharper than 3^^^3 between them. But the distinction between one dust speck and two dust specks doesn’t seem to involve a comparison between a sacred and mundane value, and the distinction between 50 and 49.99 years of torture doesn’t seem to involve a comparison between a sacred and a mundane value...
So we’re left with cyclical prefrences. The one will trade 3 people suffering 49.99 years of torture for 1 person suffering 50 years of torture; after having previously traded 9 people suffering 49.98 years of torture for 3 people suffering 49.99 years of torture; and so on back to the starting point where it’s better for 3^999999999 people to feel two dust specks than for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck; right after, a moment before, having traded one person suffering 50 years of torture for 3^1000000000 people feeling one dust speck.
I think it’s worst for 3^999999999 people to feel two dust specks than for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck. After all the next step is that it is worst for 3^1000000000 people to feel one dust speck than for 3^1000000001 people to feel less than one dust speck, which seem right.
I think that we “speckists” see injuries as poisons: they can destroy people lives only if they reach a certain concentration. So a greater but far more diluted pain can be less dangerous than a smaller but more concentrated one. 50 and 49 years of torture are still far over the threshold. One or two dust specks, on the other hand, are far below.