I have been reading less wrong about 6 month but this is my first post. I’m not an expert but an interested amateur. I read this post about 3 weeks ago and thought it was a joke. After working through replies and following links, I get it is a serious question with serious consequences in the world today. I don’t think my comments duplicate others already in the thread so here goes…
Let’s call this a “one blink” discomfort (it comes and goes in a blink) and let’s say that on average each person gets one every 10 minutes during their waking hours. In reality it is probably more, but you forget about such things almost as quick as they happen. If it is “right” to send one person to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 from a one blink discomfort, it is right to send 6 people per hour to the same fate for each of the sixteen waking hours per day, for a total of 96 people per day and 35,040 people each year.
And if it is right to send 35,040 to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 people for a single year from all one blink discomforts, then it is right to send another 35,040 to the same fate in order to save 3^^^3 people from all two blink discomforts, assuming each person on average get a two blink discomfort (it comes and goes in two blinks) thrice per hour. We have now saved the multiverse from all one and two bink discomforts for one year at the cost of sending 70,080 people to 50 years torture.
By the time the first person comes out of torture 50 years later, over 3.5 million people will have followed them into the torture chambers to save everyone else from discomforts lasting two blinks or less. If you follow the logic through from one blink up to each person gets one mild cold or some such per year that inflicts 2 days of discomfort, and you are sending untold trillions to 50 years torture every year. It seems to me a significant minority of the population would be in the torture chambers at any one time to save the majority from discomfort.
My question to the torturers is how far are you willing to take your logic before you look at yourself in the mirror and see a monster?
If we’re sending untold trillions of people to torture every year, out of 3^^^3 people total, that means that over the whole history of our universe, future and past, we have a vanishingly small chance of seeing a single person in our universe get taken away for torture. Two people is even more negligible. In the meantime, all discomforts up to the level of one mild cold get prevented for everyone.
Heck, I’d be willing to absorb all the torture-probability our universe would receive for myself, just so I wouldn’t have to suffer through the mild cold I’m having right now. I take a greater risk by walking down the stairs every day. Where do I sign up?
OK, so you would accept less than one person per universe to be tortured for 50 years for everyone to avoid occasional mild discomfort. But that doesn’t answer the question of how far you are willing to take this logic. We haven’t even began to touch serious discomfort like half the population getting menstrual cramps every month, let alone prolonged pain and suffering. Would you send one person per planet for torture? One person per city? One person per family?
The end result of this game is that a significant minority of people are being tortured at any one time so the majority can live lives free of discomfort, pain and suffering. So is your acceptable ratio 1:1,000,000, 1:10?
I’m pretty sure that right now more than 1 in 1,000,000 people around the world (that is, around 7000 people total) are experiencing suffering at least as bad as the hypothetical torture. Taking that into account, a ratio of 1:1,000,000 would be a strict improvement. Faced with a choice like that, I might selfishly refuse due to the chance that I would be one of the unlucky few, whereas right now I am doing pretty well compared to most people. But I would like to be the sort of person that wouldn’t refuse.
(I’m also not convinced that a life completely free of discomfort, pain, and suffering is possible or desirable; however, this objection doesn’t reach the heart of the matter, so I’m willing to ignore it for the sake of argument.)
The decision would be more difficult once we get to a ratio which does not strictly dominate our current situation. The terrible unfairness of a world where you’re either free of all discomfort or being horribly tortured bothers me; for this reason, I think I wouldn’t make the trade for any ratio where the total amount of suffering is roughly comparable to the status quo. I would have to do some research to give you a precise number.
But now we are very far off from the original problem of dust specks vs. torture, in which the number 3^^^3 is specifically chosen to be sufficiently large that if you have an acceptable exchange rate at all, 1 : 3^^^3 will be acceptable to you.
Don’t be bamboozled by big numbers, it is exactly the same problem: How far would you go to maximize pain in the minority in order to minimize it in the majority. As Eliezer argued so forcefully in the comments above, this problem exists on a continuum and if you want to break the chain at any point you have to justify why that point and not another.
Your argument for 1:1,000,000 does not go far enough in minimising pain for the majority. One person cannot take the pain of 1,000,000 people without dying or at least becoming unconscious. I suspect the maximum “other people’s pain” a person could endure without losing conscious is broadly between 5 and 50, let’s say 25.
So if you are willing to send one human being out of 3^^^3 people to be tortured for 50 years to remove a vanishingly small momentary discomfort for the majority, then you must also be willing to continually torture 1 in 25 people to eradicate all pain in the majority of the other 24. They are two ends of the same continuum, you cannot break the chain.
Both instances are brutally unfair on the people tortured, but at least in the second instance the majority will lead better lives while in the first instance not a single person is aware they had one less blink of discomfort in their entire lifetime. So my question remains to the torturers, are you a monster for sending 1 in 25 people to be tortured?
When did we start talking about someone “taking the pain of other people”? This is news to me; it wasn’t part of the argument before.
This, I understand is the reason you’re suggesting that I would torture 1 in 25 people. Well, I wouldn’t torture 1 in 25 people. I have already stated that if the total amount of pain is conserved (there may be difficulties with measuring “total pain”, but bear with me here) then I prefer it to be spread out evenly rather than piled onto one person.
In the dust speck formulation, the 3^^^3 being dustspecked are, in aggregate, suffering much more than the one person being tortured. 3^^^3 is very large. For any continuum you could actually describe that ends in “torture 1 in X people so that the remainder live perfect lives”, X will still be approximately 3^^^3. Possibly divided by some insignificant number like googolplex that can be writtten down in mere scientific notation.
So you would be willing to keep sending more and more people to torture for trivial less discomfort for the majority for each person tortured. At what point would you say enough is enough?
I have been reading less wrong about 6 month but this is my first post. I’m not an expert but an interested amateur. I read this post about 3 weeks ago and thought it was a joke. After working through replies and following links, I get it is a serious question with serious consequences in the world today. I don’t think my comments duplicate others already in the thread so here goes…
Let’s call this a “one blink” discomfort (it comes and goes in a blink) and let’s say that on average each person gets one every 10 minutes during their waking hours. In reality it is probably more, but you forget about such things almost as quick as they happen. If it is “right” to send one person to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 from a one blink discomfort, it is right to send 6 people per hour to the same fate for each of the sixteen waking hours per day, for a total of 96 people per day and 35,040 people each year.
And if it is right to send 35,040 to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 people for a single year from all one blink discomforts, then it is right to send another 35,040 to the same fate in order to save 3^^^3 people from all two blink discomforts, assuming each person on average get a two blink discomfort (it comes and goes in two blinks) thrice per hour. We have now saved the multiverse from all one and two bink discomforts for one year at the cost of sending 70,080 people to 50 years torture.
By the time the first person comes out of torture 50 years later, over 3.5 million people will have followed them into the torture chambers to save everyone else from discomforts lasting two blinks or less. If you follow the logic through from one blink up to each person gets one mild cold or some such per year that inflicts 2 days of discomfort, and you are sending untold trillions to 50 years torture every year. It seems to me a significant minority of the population would be in the torture chambers at any one time to save the majority from discomfort.
My question to the torturers is how far are you willing to take your logic before you look at yourself in the mirror and see a monster?
3^^^3 is very very very very large.
If we’re sending untold trillions of people to torture every year, out of 3^^^3 people total, that means that over the whole history of our universe, future and past, we have a vanishingly small chance of seeing a single person in our universe get taken away for torture. Two people is even more negligible. In the meantime, all discomforts up to the level of one mild cold get prevented for everyone.
Heck, I’d be willing to absorb all the torture-probability our universe would receive for myself, just so I wouldn’t have to suffer through the mild cold I’m having right now. I take a greater risk by walking down the stairs every day. Where do I sign up?
OK, so you would accept less than one person per universe to be tortured for 50 years for everyone to avoid occasional mild discomfort. But that doesn’t answer the question of how far you are willing to take this logic. We haven’t even began to touch serious discomfort like half the population getting menstrual cramps every month, let alone prolonged pain and suffering. Would you send one person per planet for torture? One person per city? One person per family?
The end result of this game is that a significant minority of people are being tortured at any one time so the majority can live lives free of discomfort, pain and suffering. So is your acceptable ratio 1:1,000,000, 1:10?
I’m pretty sure that right now more than 1 in 1,000,000 people around the world (that is, around 7000 people total) are experiencing suffering at least as bad as the hypothetical torture. Taking that into account, a ratio of 1:1,000,000 would be a strict improvement. Faced with a choice like that, I might selfishly refuse due to the chance that I would be one of the unlucky few, whereas right now I am doing pretty well compared to most people. But I would like to be the sort of person that wouldn’t refuse.
(I’m also not convinced that a life completely free of discomfort, pain, and suffering is possible or desirable; however, this objection doesn’t reach the heart of the matter, so I’m willing to ignore it for the sake of argument.)
The decision would be more difficult once we get to a ratio which does not strictly dominate our current situation. The terrible unfairness of a world where you’re either free of all discomfort or being horribly tortured bothers me; for this reason, I think I wouldn’t make the trade for any ratio where the total amount of suffering is roughly comparable to the status quo. I would have to do some research to give you a precise number.
But now we are very far off from the original problem of dust specks vs. torture, in which the number 3^^^3 is specifically chosen to be sufficiently large that if you have an acceptable exchange rate at all, 1 : 3^^^3 will be acceptable to you.
Don’t be bamboozled by big numbers, it is exactly the same problem: How far would you go to maximize pain in the minority in order to minimize it in the majority. As Eliezer argued so forcefully in the comments above, this problem exists on a continuum and if you want to break the chain at any point you have to justify why that point and not another.
Your argument for 1:1,000,000 does not go far enough in minimising pain for the majority. One person cannot take the pain of 1,000,000 people without dying or at least becoming unconscious. I suspect the maximum “other people’s pain” a person could endure without losing conscious is broadly between 5 and 50, let’s say 25.
So if you are willing to send one human being out of 3^^^3 people to be tortured for 50 years to remove a vanishingly small momentary discomfort for the majority, then you must also be willing to continually torture 1 in 25 people to eradicate all pain in the majority of the other 24. They are two ends of the same continuum, you cannot break the chain.
Both instances are brutally unfair on the people tortured, but at least in the second instance the majority will lead better lives while in the first instance not a single person is aware they had one less blink of discomfort in their entire lifetime. So my question remains to the torturers, are you a monster for sending 1 in 25 people to be tortured?
When did we start talking about someone “taking the pain of other people”? This is news to me; it wasn’t part of the argument before.
This, I understand is the reason you’re suggesting that I would torture 1 in 25 people. Well, I wouldn’t torture 1 in 25 people. I have already stated that if the total amount of pain is conserved (there may be difficulties with measuring “total pain”, but bear with me here) then I prefer it to be spread out evenly rather than piled onto one person.
In the dust speck formulation, the 3^^^3 being dustspecked are, in aggregate, suffering much more than the one person being tortured. 3^^^3 is very large. For any continuum you could actually describe that ends in “torture 1 in X people so that the remainder live perfect lives”, X will still be approximately 3^^^3. Possibly divided by some insignificant number like googolplex that can be writtten down in mere scientific notation.
At no point did anyone accept your 1:25 proposal.
What makes you think that making the numbers bigger changes anything? Anyone who switches answers between the original question and yours is confused.
So you would be willing to keep sending more and more people to torture for trivial less discomfort for the majority for each person tortured. At what point would you say enough is enough?
Once the positive consequences are outweighed by the negative consequences, obviously.