In the torture vs dust specks comparison, it is important not to discard the disutilities of unfairness, nor of moral hazards. One cannot publicly acknowledge the superiority of “one guy tortured” vs ” lots of people mildly inconvenienced” without others, including potentially our politicians, or enemies, deciding that this supports their use of actual torture on actual people “for the greater good”. Accepting torture has a negative utility for many people.
Also we humans value fairness, and prefer that things be evenly distributed (fairness has positive utility). The disutility of even a tiny fraction of those people knowing that someone was tortured so as to spare them from dust specks, when added together, would probably exceed that of the person being tortured. The danger of “shut up and multiply” is that someone might be multiplying the wrong things.
Rejecting the principle that we can’t, in general, sacrifice one person for the good of many, also has disutility. If we were to accept torturing someone to prevent a lot of dust specks, imagine how much time would have to be spent arguing whether we can take away this other guy’s property for some greater good (which might fail to deliver, and might have been suggested for someone’s self-interest).
In the torture vs dust specks comparison, it is important not to discard the disutilities of unfairness, nor of moral hazards. One cannot publicly acknowledge the superiority of “one guy tortured” vs ” lots of people mildly inconvenienced” without others, including potentially our politicians, or enemies, deciding that this supports their use of actual torture on actual people “for the greater good”. Accepting torture has a negative utility for many people.
Also we humans value fairness, and prefer that things be evenly distributed (fairness has positive utility). The disutility of even a tiny fraction of those people knowing that someone was tortured so as to spare them from dust specks, when added together, would probably exceed that of the person being tortured. The danger of “shut up and multiply” is that someone might be multiplying the wrong things.
Rejecting the principle that we can’t, in general, sacrifice one person for the good of many, also has disutility. If we were to accept torturing someone to prevent a lot of dust specks, imagine how much time would have to be spent arguing whether we can take away this other guy’s property for some greater good (which might fail to deliver, and might have been suggested for someone’s self-interest).