Okay, now what if you give them a drug that makes them forget the torture? And maybe also keep them drugged-up until they heal. How would that compare?
That is a good point. If you could wipe their memories in such a way that they didn’t have any lasting psychological damage, that would make it significantly better. It’s still pretty extreme; a month is a long time, and if we’re talking about a serious attempt to maximize their pain during that time, there’s a lot of pain that we’d have to cancel out. X and N will still need to be very large, but not as large as without the drugs.
Okay, now what if you give them a drug that makes them forget the torture? And maybe also keep them drugged-up until they heal. How would that compare?
That is a good point. If you could wipe their memories in such a way that they didn’t have any lasting psychological damage, that would make it significantly better. It’s still pretty extreme; a month is a long time, and if we’re talking about a serious attempt to maximize their pain during that time, there’s a lot of pain that we’d have to cancel out. X and N will still need to be very large, but not as large as without the drugs.