Agree—I was kind of thinking it as friction. Say you have 1000 boxes in a warehouse, all precisely where they need to be. Being close to their current positions is better than not. Is it better to A) apply 100 N of force over 1 second to 1 box, or B) 1 N of force over 1 second to all 1000 boxes? Well if they’re frictionless and all on a level surface, do option A because it’s easier to fix, but that’s not how the world is. Say that 1 N against the boxes isn’t even enough to defeat the static friction: that means in option B, none of the boxes will even move.
Back to the choice between A) having a googolplex of people have a speck of dust in their eye vs B) one person being tortured for 50 years: in option A, you have a googolplex of people who lead productive lives who don’t even remember that anything out of the ordinary happened to them suddenly (assuming one single dust speck doesn’t even pass the memorable threshold), and in option B, you have a googolplex − 1 of people leading productive lives who don’t remember anything out of the ordinary happening, and one person being tortured and never accomplishing anything.
Agree—I was kind of thinking it as friction. Say you have 1000 boxes in a warehouse, all precisely where they need to be. Being close to their current positions is better than not. Is it better to A) apply 100 N of force over 1 second to 1 box, or B) 1 N of force over 1 second to all 1000 boxes? Well if they’re frictionless and all on a level surface, do option A because it’s easier to fix, but that’s not how the world is. Say that 1 N against the boxes isn’t even enough to defeat the static friction: that means in option B, none of the boxes will even move.
Back to the choice between A) having a googolplex of people have a speck of dust in their eye vs B) one person being tortured for 50 years: in option A, you have a googolplex of people who lead productive lives who don’t even remember that anything out of the ordinary happened to them suddenly (assuming one single dust speck doesn’t even pass the memorable threshold), and in option B, you have a googolplex − 1 of people leading productive lives who don’t remember anything out of the ordinary happening, and one person being tortured and never accomplishing anything.