Imagine you’re immortal. Would you rather get a dust speck in your eye for 3^^^3 straight days, or endure 50 years of torture, never to be bothered by a dust speck again?
Going with dust specks is the obvious choice to me. The way I see it, life is still very much worth living when I’m dealing with a dust speck. Torture might make me wish for death in the first day...especially with the knowledge that 18,261 days were forthcoming.
I can’t tell if:
a) I dislike dust specks less than you
b) I dislike torture more than you
c) Aggregating pain/discomfort/suffering has weird results. (e.g. perhaps 5 minutes of torture is immeasurably more than 60x as bad as 5 seconds of torture.)
or d) there’s something else I’m missing.
I think this is very relevant to the complexity of values and how difficult it is for humans to grasp their own utility functions. Cards on the table, the aggregation/math issues make me unable to embrace consequentialism...but if I’m overlooking something I’d love to be shown the light.
Imagine you’re immortal. Would you rather get a dust speck in your eye for 3^^^3 straight days, or endure 50 years of torture, never to be bothered by a dust speck again?
Going with dust specks is the obvious choice to me. The way I see it, life is still very much worth living when I’m dealing with a dust speck. Torture might make me wish for death in the first day...especially with the knowledge that 18,261 days were forthcoming.
I can’t tell if:
a) I dislike dust specks less than you
b) I dislike torture more than you
c) Aggregating pain/discomfort/suffering has weird results. (e.g. perhaps 5 minutes of torture is immeasurably more than 60x as bad as 5 seconds of torture.)
or d) there’s something else I’m missing.
I think this is very relevant to the complexity of values and how difficult it is for humans to grasp their own utility functions. Cards on the table, the aggregation/math issues make me unable to embrace consequentialism...but if I’m overlooking something I’d love to be shown the light.