I have a high tolerance for chaotic surroundings, but even so I occasionally experience a weak, fleeting desire to impose greater order on other people’s belongings in my physical environment. It could be thwarted by an event like a fly buzzing around my head once, which though not painful at all would divert my attention long enough to ensure that the desire died without having been successfully acted on.
OK. So, if we assume for simplicity that a fly-buzzing event is the smallest measurable desire-thwarting event a human can experience, you can substitute “fly-buzz” for “dust speck” everywhere it appears here and translate the question into a desirist ethical reference frame.
The question in those terms becomes: is there some number of people, each of whom is experiencing a single fly-buzz, where the aggregated desire-thwarting caused by that aggregate event is worse than a much greater desire-thwarting event (e.g. the canonical 50 years of torture) experienced by one person?
Well, Yes, but then as stated earlier I think desirism bites the bullet on “dust speck”, too, given more dust specks. For a quick Fermi estimate, if I suppose that the fly-buzz-scenario takes about 5 seconds and is 1/1000th as strong (in some sense) as the desire not to be tortured for 5 seconds, then the number of people where the fly-buzz-scenarios outweight the torture is about a half trillion.
Granted, for people who don’t find desirism intuitive, this altered scenario changes nothing about the argument. I personally do find desirism intuitive, though unlikely to be a complete theory of ethics. So for me, given the dilemma between 50 years of torture of one individual and one dust-speck-in-eye or one fly-buzz-distraction for each of 3^^^3 people, I have a strong gut reaction of “Hell yes!” to preferring the specks and “Hell no!” to preferring the distractions.
I have a high tolerance for chaotic surroundings, but even so I occasionally experience a weak, fleeting desire to impose greater order on other people’s belongings in my physical environment. It could be thwarted by an event like a fly buzzing around my head once, which though not painful at all would divert my attention long enough to ensure that the desire died without having been successfully acted on.
OK. So, if we assume for simplicity that a fly-buzzing event is the smallest measurable desire-thwarting event a human can experience, you can substitute “fly-buzz” for “dust speck” everywhere it appears here and translate the question into a desirist ethical reference frame.
The question in those terms becomes: is there some number of people, each of whom is experiencing a single fly-buzz, where the aggregated desire-thwarting caused by that aggregate event is worse than a much greater desire-thwarting event (e.g. the canonical 50 years of torture) experienced by one person?
And if not, why not?
Well, Yes, but then as stated earlier I think desirism bites the bullet on “dust speck”, too, given more dust specks. For a quick Fermi estimate, if I suppose that the fly-buzz-scenario takes about 5 seconds and is 1/1000th as strong (in some sense) as the desire not to be tortured for 5 seconds, then the number of people where the fly-buzz-scenarios outweight the torture is about a half trillion.
Granted, for people who don’t find desirism intuitive, this altered scenario changes nothing about the argument. I personally do find desirism intuitive, though unlikely to be a complete theory of ethics. So for me, given the dilemma between 50 years of torture of one individual and one dust-speck-in-eye or one fly-buzz-distraction for each of 3^^^3 people, I have a strong gut reaction of “Hell yes!” to preferring the specks and “Hell no!” to preferring the distractions.
Ah. I think I misunderstood you initially, then. Thanks for the clarification.