Z.M. Davis, that’s an interesting point about the slugs, I might get to it later. However, I suspect it has little to do with the torture and dust specks.
Doug, here’s another problem for your proposed function: according to your function, it doesn’t matter whether a single person takes all the pain or if it is distributed, as long as it sums to the same amount according to your function.
So let’s suppose that the pain of solitary confinement without anything interesting to do can never add up to the pain of 50 years torture. According to this, would you honestly choose to suffer the solitary confinement for 3^^^3 years, rather than the 50 years torture?
I suspect that most people would prefer to take the torture and get on with their lives, instead of suffering for the confinement for eternity.
But if you modify the function to allow for this, more preference reversals are coming: for we can begin to decrease the length of the solitary confinement by a microsecond while increasing the number of people who suffer it by a large amount.
In order to prevent an extremely short confinement for 3^^^3 people from exceeding the torture, which would presumably imply the same possibility for dust specks, you will have to say that there is some length of solitary confinement for some number of people, such that solitary confinement for Almost Infinite people, for a length of time shorter by the shortest possible noticeable time period, can never be worse.
Would you hold to this too, or would you honestly prefer the 3^^^3 years confinement to 50 years torture?
Z.M. Davis, that’s an interesting point about the slugs, I might get to it later. However, I suspect it has little to do with the torture and dust specks.
Doug, here’s another problem for your proposed function: according to your function, it doesn’t matter whether a single person takes all the pain or if it is distributed, as long as it sums to the same amount according to your function.
So let’s suppose that the pain of solitary confinement without anything interesting to do can never add up to the pain of 50 years torture. According to this, would you honestly choose to suffer the solitary confinement for 3^^^3 years, rather than the 50 years torture?
I suspect that most people would prefer to take the torture and get on with their lives, instead of suffering for the confinement for eternity.
But if you modify the function to allow for this, more preference reversals are coming: for we can begin to decrease the length of the solitary confinement by a microsecond while increasing the number of people who suffer it by a large amount.
In order to prevent an extremely short confinement for 3^^^3 people from exceeding the torture, which would presumably imply the same possibility for dust specks, you will have to say that there is some length of solitary confinement for some number of people, such that solitary confinement for Almost Infinite people, for a length of time shorter by the shortest possible noticeable time period, can never be worse.
Would you hold to this too, or would you honestly prefer the 3^^^3 years confinement to 50 years torture?