Mr. Yudkowsky, I’m not sure the duration/intensity of the torture is the only bad thing relevant here. A friend of mine pointed out that a problem with 50 years of torture is that it permanently destroys someone’s life. (I think it was in one of the “fake altruism” family of posts that you pointed out that belief of utility != utility of belief.) So the utility curve would be pretty flat for the first couple thousand dust specks, beginning to slope down in proportion to the pain through a few minutes of torture. After that, it would quickly become steeper as the torture began to materially alter the person tortured. Another factor to consider is the difference between pain during which you can do other things, and pain during which you can’t. So the 50-year-torturee’s (or even a 1-minute torturee’s) life is effectively shortened in a way that even a 1,000,000-dust-speck person’s life is not. So I’m not sure people aren’t implicitly including those factors sometimes, when they get mad about torture. I’d rather five years of chronic back pain than five minutes of permanently soul-crushing torture.
You might argue that it’s still irrational, but it’s not as obvious as you make it out to be.
Mr. Yudkowsky, I’m not sure the duration/intensity of the torture is the only bad thing relevant here. A friend of mine pointed out that a problem with 50 years of torture is that it permanently destroys someone’s life. (I think it was in one of the “fake altruism” family of posts that you pointed out that belief of utility != utility of belief.) So the utility curve would be pretty flat for the first couple thousand dust specks, beginning to slope down in proportion to the pain through a few minutes of torture. After that, it would quickly become steeper as the torture began to materially alter the person tortured. Another factor to consider is the difference between pain during which you can do other things, and pain during which you can’t. So the 50-year-torturee’s (or even a 1-minute torturee’s) life is effectively shortened in a way that even a 1,000,000-dust-speck person’s life is not. So I’m not sure people aren’t implicitly including those factors sometimes, when they get mad about torture. I’d rather five years of chronic back pain than five minutes of permanently soul-crushing torture.
You might argue that it’s still irrational, but it’s not as obvious as you make it out to be.