50 years of torture is going to ruin someone’s life. Dust specks and stubbed toes are not going to ruin anyone’s life, which makes the number of people with dust specks and stubbed toes irrelevant. That’s the threshold. You can’t multiply one to get to the other.
The amount humanity loses to a dust speck in someone’s eye is exactly 0, unless that person was piloting an aircraft or something and crashes because of it, which—based on my reading of the premise—doesn’t seem to be the case. A stubbed toe might cost more, but even that is only true if you treat humanity as an amorpheous, hiveminded mass rather than a group of individuals.
A stubbed toe can put someone in a bad mood which affects their behavior until it feels better, and that can put a damper on their whole day.
I intuitively see 3^^^^3 stubbed toes as worse than 50 years of torture, but not 3^^^^3 dust specks, but this is a scenario where I feel I should at the very least be highly suspicious of my intuition.
Ruining someone’s day is still on the other side of the threshold from ruining someone’s life. Now, if all the stubbed toes were going to happen to the same person, that would be different.
I guess I could say that the line is between being hurt, and being destroyed. The point at which I would start to look at the man being tortured as a preferable option is when the pain being suffered by the googolplex others would be bad enough to cause serious financial, social, or physical damage to each of them as individuals. That’s the line.
If you give a significant fraction of 3^^^^3 people a bad day, it adds up to more time worth of unhappy experience than a 50 year life that is miserable 100% of the time, more times over than we can possibly imagine.
A single second each in the lives of every person on Earth adds up to about 2000 years of cumulative life experience. That’s not even a drop in the ocean of 3^^^^3 people.
Of course, if you give even an infinitesimally tiny fraction of that many people, say a trillion, single bad days, that’s probably going to lead to at least a few million ruined relationships and lost jobs. 3^^^^3 stubbed toes would lead to more ruined lives than the number of people who’ve actually ever lived. But even if you assume no spillover effects, it’s still a greater mass of cumulative negative experience than has occurred in the entirety of human history.
You’re making it sound like all humans share a single consciousness and pool their life experiences. Every human has a different life, a different consciousness. Totalling the value of a second from any number of humans can never equal the value of a human lifetime, because you won’t have caused any serious problems for any person.
Define “serious”. Specify one harm X that is just barely not serious, and one Y that is just a little worse, and is serious. Verify that you can find an N such that YN > 1 human life, and that there is no N such that XN > 1 human life.
Losing a finger is traumatic and produces chronic disfigurement and loss of some manual dexterity, but (as long as it isn’t a thumb or index finger) it isn’t going to truly handicap someone. Losing a hand WILL truly handicap someone. I would rather everyone lose a finger than one person lose a hand.
I would rather everyone lose a finger than one person lose a hand.
I’m pretty sure that if an invading alien fleet came and demanded every human lose a single finger, there’d be more than enough people that’d be willing to sacrifice their very lives to prevent that tribute—and though I’m not sure I’d be as brave as that, I’d most certainly be willing to sacrifice my hand in order to save a finger of each of 6 billion people.
People would sacrifice their lives for it. However, would that choice be rational? Especially if we consider the likelihood that a war with the aliens might result in massive civilian casualties? Fighting is only a good idea if winning puts you in a better position than you would otherwise be in.
Being willing to sacrifice your hand is noble, and I would probably do the same thing. But if you’re talking about someone ELSE’S hand, you need to look at what losing a finger really costs in life experience and working ability versus losing a hand.
Actually, let’s make it closer. X = losing a finger, Y = losing a thumb. My answer would still be the same. Missing a finger isn’t a huge setback. Missing a thumb is.
Totalling the value of a second from any number of humans can never equal the value of a human lifetime,
I don’t see why not.
, because you won’t have caused any serious problems for any person.
You’ll have caused an infinitisemal problem to a truly humongous number of people.
Even before I had discovered LessWrong or met the dust-speck-vs-torture problem, I had publically wondered if some computer virus-creators (especially those famous viruses that affected millions of people worldwide, hijacking email services, etc) were even worse in the results of their actions than your average murderer or average rapist. They stole some minutes out of many million people’s lives. Minutes stolen from how many millions people become morally equivalent to murdering a person?
So the issue exists: If dust specks aren’t enough for you, how about breaking a leg of 3^^^^3 people. This doesn’t ruin their whole life, but it may ruin a whole month for them. Does the equation seem different now (by talking about a month instead of millisecond), that you would prefer to have a single person tortured for 50 years instead of 3^^^^3 people having a leg broken?
Well, if those 3^^^^3 people being crippled for a month is going to shut down the galactic economy, then torturing someone for fifty years is preferable. If we’re just taking the suffering of one person who broke his leg, then had 3^^^^3 other people endure the same thing in ISOLATION (say each of the leg-breakers lives in a different parallel universe and thus no society has to give more than one month’s worth of worker’s compensation), on the other hand, I would rather have everyone break their legs.
I see. This is then no longer about not causing “serious problems”—because a broken leg is a serious problem.
But how far does your argument extent. Let’s increase the amount of individual harm:
How about 3^^^^3 people tortured for 3 months, vs a single person being tortured for 50 years? Which would you rather?
How about 3^^^^3 people imprisoned unjustly for ten years, in rather bad but not torturing conditions, vs a single person being tortured for 50 years. Which would you rather?
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For the sake of this discussion, we indeed consider the cases individual (we can imagine each case happening in a parallel universe, as you suggest)
Three months of torture is enough to cause immense and longlasting psychological scarring. Ten years out of your life is something that changes the course of a person’s life. I would rather someone be tortured for fifty years than have either of the above happen to a large number of people.
I think your choice of broken leg is pretty much exactly at the threshold. I can’t think of anything worse than that that wouldn’t stand a good chance of ruining someone’s life.
50 years of torture is going to ruin someone’s life. Dust specks and stubbed toes are not going to ruin anyone’s life, which makes the number of people with dust specks and stubbed toes irrelevant. That’s the threshold. You can’t multiply one to get to the other.
The amount humanity loses to a dust speck in someone’s eye is exactly 0, unless that person was piloting an aircraft or something and crashes because of it, which—based on my reading of the premise—doesn’t seem to be the case. A stubbed toe might cost more, but even that is only true if you treat humanity as an amorpheous, hiveminded mass rather than a group of individuals.
A stubbed toe can put someone in a bad mood which affects their behavior until it feels better, and that can put a damper on their whole day.
I intuitively see 3^^^^3 stubbed toes as worse than 50 years of torture, but not 3^^^^3 dust specks, but this is a scenario where I feel I should at the very least be highly suspicious of my intuition.
Ruining someone’s day is still on the other side of the threshold from ruining someone’s life. Now, if all the stubbed toes were going to happen to the same person, that would be different.
I guess I could say that the line is between being hurt, and being destroyed. The point at which I would start to look at the man being tortured as a preferable option is when the pain being suffered by the googolplex others would be bad enough to cause serious financial, social, or physical damage to each of them as individuals. That’s the line.
If you give a significant fraction of 3^^^^3 people a bad day, it adds up to more time worth of unhappy experience than a 50 year life that is miserable 100% of the time, more times over than we can possibly imagine.
A single second each in the lives of every person on Earth adds up to about 2000 years of cumulative life experience. That’s not even a drop in the ocean of 3^^^^3 people.
Of course, if you give even an infinitesimally tiny fraction of that many people, say a trillion, single bad days, that’s probably going to lead to at least a few million ruined relationships and lost jobs. 3^^^^3 stubbed toes would lead to more ruined lives than the number of people who’ve actually ever lived. But even if you assume no spillover effects, it’s still a greater mass of cumulative negative experience than has occurred in the entirety of human history.
And a dust speck is going to ruin someone’s fraction of a second. How many fractions of a second do a life make?
You’re making it sound like all humans share a single consciousness and pool their life experiences. Every human has a different life, a different consciousness. Totalling the value of a second from any number of humans can never equal the value of a human lifetime, because you won’t have caused any serious problems for any person.
Define “serious”. Specify one harm X that is just barely not serious, and one Y that is just a little worse, and is serious. Verify that you can find an N such that YN > 1 human life, and that there is no N such that XN > 1 human life.
X = losing a finger. Y = losing a hand.
Losing a finger is traumatic and produces chronic disfigurement and loss of some manual dexterity, but (as long as it isn’t a thumb or index finger) it isn’t going to truly handicap someone. Losing a hand WILL truly handicap someone. I would rather everyone lose a finger than one person lose a hand.
I’m pretty sure that if an invading alien fleet came and demanded every human lose a single finger, there’d be more than enough people that’d be willing to sacrifice their very lives to prevent that tribute—and though I’m not sure I’d be as brave as that, I’d most certainly be willing to sacrifice my hand in order to save a finger of each of 6 billion people.
People would sacrifice their lives for it. However, would that choice be rational? Especially if we consider the likelihood that a war with the aliens might result in massive civilian casualties? Fighting is only a good idea if winning puts you in a better position than you would otherwise be in.
Being willing to sacrifice your hand is noble, and I would probably do the same thing. But if you’re talking about someone ELSE’S hand, you need to look at what losing a finger really costs in life experience and working ability versus losing a hand.
Actually, let’s make it closer. X = losing a finger, Y = losing a thumb. My answer would still be the same. Missing a finger isn’t a huge setback. Missing a thumb is.
I don’t see why not.
You’ll have caused an infinitisemal problem to a truly humongous number of people.
Even before I had discovered LessWrong or met the dust-speck-vs-torture problem, I had publically wondered if some computer virus-creators (especially those famous viruses that affected millions of people worldwide, hijacking email services, etc) were even worse in the results of their actions than your average murderer or average rapist. They stole some minutes out of many million people’s lives. Minutes stolen from how many millions people become morally equivalent to murdering a person?
So the issue exists: If dust specks aren’t enough for you, how about breaking a leg of 3^^^^3 people. This doesn’t ruin their whole life, but it may ruin a whole month for them. Does the equation seem different now (by talking about a month instead of millisecond), that you would prefer to have a single person tortured for 50 years instead of 3^^^^3 people having a leg broken?
Well, if those 3^^^^3 people being crippled for a month is going to shut down the galactic economy, then torturing someone for fifty years is preferable. If we’re just taking the suffering of one person who broke his leg, then had 3^^^^3 other people endure the same thing in ISOLATION (say each of the leg-breakers lives in a different parallel universe and thus no society has to give more than one month’s worth of worker’s compensation), on the other hand, I would rather have everyone break their legs.
I see. This is then no longer about not causing “serious problems”—because a broken leg is a serious problem.
But how far does your argument extent. Let’s increase the amount of individual harm: How about 3^^^^3 people tortured for 3 months, vs a single person being tortured for 50 years? Which would you rather?
How about 3^^^^3 people imprisoned unjustly for ten years, in rather bad but not torturing conditions, vs a single person being tortured for 50 years. Which would you rather?
- For the sake of this discussion, we indeed consider the cases individual (we can imagine each case happening in a parallel universe, as you suggest)
Three months of torture is enough to cause immense and longlasting psychological scarring. Ten years out of your life is something that changes the course of a person’s life. I would rather someone be tortured for fifty years than have either of the above happen to a large number of people.
I think your choice of broken leg is pretty much exactly at the threshold. I can’t think of anything worse than that that wouldn’t stand a good chance of ruining someone’s life.