I’m not sure why this comment was at −1; despite the angry tone, it makes some interesting points. Both the “mental patch” and the “missed orgy” arguments helped me overcome my gut reaction and think more objectively about the situation.
While reading through this and the other “speck vs torture” threads, many of the important ideas were just clarifications or modifications of the initial problem: for example, replacing “dust speck” (which rounds to 0 in my head, even if it shouldn’t) with “toe stub” or “face punch”, and suddenly the utilitarian answer becomes much more intuitive for me. Same for replacing “torture” with “missed a 50-year party”. I’m still pretty sure if faced with the choice as originally stated, I would choose specks, but at least I’d feel morally bad about it :P
Of course, if you’ve gone through the trouble of thinking it through that far, you probably don’t want to decrease your confidence too much, or you may wind up deferring to those expansive, confident fools who didn’t think it through at all :P