I would almost undoubtedly choose a dust speck a day for the rest of my life. So would most people.
Could it be that in the 50 years worth of torture would also amount to more than a dust spec of daily discomfort caused by having been psychologically traumatized by the torture, for the remaining 3^^^3 days?
What if the 50 years of torture come at the end of the lifespan?
Istill would rather just take the dust speck now and then though. Nothing forbids me from having a function more nonlinear than 3^^^^[n] 3 , as a messy wired neural network i can easily implement imprecise algebra on the numbers that are far beyond any up arrow notation, or even numbers x,y,z… that are such that any finite integer x < y , any finite integer y < z , and so on . Infinities are not hard to implement at all. Consider comparisons on arrays made like ab[1] . I’m using strings when I need that property in software, so that i can always make some value that will have precedence.
edit: Note that one could think of the comparison between real values in above example as comparisons between a[1]*big number + a[2] , which may seem sensible, and then learn of the uparrows, get mind boggled, and reason that the up-arrows in a[2] will be larger than big number. But they never will change outcome of the comparison as per the actual logic where a[1] always matters more than a[2] .
Sure, if I factor in the knock-on effects of 50 years of torture (or otherwise ignore the original thought experiment and substitute my own) I might come to different results.
Leaving that aside, though, I agree that the nature of my utility function in suffering is absolutely relevant here, and it’s entirely possible for that function to be such that BIGNUMBER x SMALLSUFFERING is worth less than SMALLNUMBER x BIGSUFFERING even if BIGNUMBER >>>>>> SMALLNUMBER.
The key word here is possible though. I don’t really know that it is.
Could it be that in the 50 years worth of torture would also amount to more than a dust spec of daily discomfort caused by having been psychologically traumatized by the torture, for the remaining 3^^^3 days?
What if the 50 years of torture come at the end of the lifespan?
Istill would rather just take the dust speck now and then though. Nothing forbids me from having a function more nonlinear than 3^^^^[n] 3 , as a messy wired neural network i can easily implement imprecise algebra on the numbers that are far beyond any up arrow notation, or even numbers x,y,z… that are such that any finite integer x < y , any finite integer y < z , and so on . Infinities are not hard to implement at all. Consider comparisons on arrays made like ab[1] . I’m using strings when I need that property in software, so that i can always make some value that will have precedence.
edit: Note that one could think of the comparison between real values in above example as comparisons between a[1]*big number + a[2] , which may seem sensible, and then learn of the uparrows, get mind boggled, and reason that the up-arrows in a[2] will be larger than big number. But they never will change outcome of the comparison as per the actual logic where a[1] always matters more than a[2] .
Sure, if I factor in the knock-on effects of 50 years of torture (or otherwise ignore the original thought experiment and substitute my own) I might come to different results.
Leaving that aside, though, I agree that the nature of my utility function in suffering is absolutely relevant here, and it’s entirely possible for that function to be such that BIGNUMBER x SMALLSUFFERING is worth less than SMALLNUMBER x BIGSUFFERING even if BIGNUMBER >>>>>> SMALLNUMBER.
The key word here is possible though. I don’t really know that it is.