Let’s turn the argument on its head: if you could abolish torture at the cost of everybody getting a speck of dust in their eye, would you do it?
Next question: If you could stop the Holocaust at the cost of N people getting dust specks in their eye, what’s the maximum value you’d permit for N? That is, is there a number N with the property that if N people get dust specks in their eye, you prevent the Holocaust, but if N+1 people get dust specks in their eye, then the Holocaust proceeds on schedule?
Arguments that begin with something benign and proceed by degree to silly conclusions have been around since ancient times. Dressing them up in the language of mathematics doesn’t change their nature. The kind of utilitarian model presented here is not an accurate reflection of the real world. Locally you can get reasonable results if you decide to treat similar things on a linear scale, but for disparate things the linear approximation breaks down. You can still plug numbers into the model, but the answer is meaningless.
Let’s turn the argument on its head: if you could abolish torture at the cost of everybody getting a speck of dust in their eye, would you do it?
Next question: If you could stop the Holocaust at the cost of N people getting dust specks in their eye, what’s the maximum value you’d permit for N? That is, is there a number N with the property that if N people get dust specks in their eye, you prevent the Holocaust, but if N+1 people get dust specks in their eye, then the Holocaust proceeds on schedule?
Arguments that begin with something benign and proceed by degree to silly conclusions have been around since ancient times. Dressing them up in the language of mathematics doesn’t change their nature. The kind of utilitarian model presented here is not an accurate reflection of the real world. Locally you can get reasonable results if you decide to treat similar things on a linear scale, but for disparate things the linear approximation breaks down. You can still plug numbers into the model, but the answer is meaningless.