There is a perfectly good way of treating this as numbers. Transfinite division is a thing. With X people experiencing infinidesimal discomfort and Y people experiening finite discomfort if X and Y are finites then torture is always worse. With X being transfinite dust specks could be worse. But in reverse if you insist that the impacts are reals ie finites then there are finite multiples that go past each other that is for any r,y,z in R r>0,y>r, there is a z so that rz>y.
There is a perfectly good way of treating this as numbers. Transfinite division is a thing. With X people experiencing infinidesimal discomfort and Y people experiening finite discomfort if X and Y are finites then torture is always worse. With X being transfinite dust specks could be worse. But in reverse if you insist that the impacts are reals ie finites then there are finite multiples that go past each other that is for any r,y,z in R r>0,y>r, there is a z so that rz>y.