I’m skeptical that physical pain scales beyond 2 or so orders of magnitude in a given span of time. I’m also skeptical of the coherence of death as an ontological possibility.
Being forced to choose between two things I believe are incoherent, I’d pick the torture. I’m more worried that there’s a coherent notion of death being referenced than that some entity will experience a level of pain that seems impossible. There’s multiple problems with the concept of pain here: it’s not clear the entity experiencing it would be conscious during that time frame (especially if they have no memory, as memory is tied to consciousness), it’s not clear that entity would be indentifiable as me, it’s not clear that upping some pain number actually corresponds to that level of utility, as utility is plausibly bounded over short intervals, etc.
I’m skeptical that physical pain scales beyond 2 or so orders of magnitude in a given span of time. I’m also skeptical of the coherence of death as an ontological possibility.
Being forced to choose between two things I believe are incoherent, I’d pick the torture. I’m more worried that there’s a coherent notion of death being referenced than that some entity will experience a level of pain that seems impossible. There’s multiple problems with the concept of pain here: it’s not clear the entity experiencing it would be conscious during that time frame (especially if they have no memory, as memory is tied to consciousness), it’s not clear that entity would be indentifiable as me, it’s not clear that upping some pain number actually corresponds to that level of utility, as utility is plausibly bounded over short intervals, etc.