"What's the worst that can happen?" goes the optimistic saying. It's probably a bad question to ask anyone with a creative imagination. Let's consider the problem on an individual level: it's not really the worst that can happen, but would nonetheless be fairly bad, if you were horribly tortured for a number of years. This is one of the worse things that can realistically happen to one person in today's world.
What's the least bad, bad thing that can happen? Well, suppose a dust speck floated into your eye and irritated it just a little, for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make you notice before you blink and wipe away the dust speck.
For our next ingredient, we need a large number. Let's use 3^^^3, written in Knuth's up-arrow notation:
- 3^3 = 27.
- 3^^3 = (3^(3^3)) = 3^27 = 7625597484987.
- 3^^^3 = (3^^(3^^3)) = 3^^7625597484987 = (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))).
3^^^3 is an exponential tower of 3s which is 7,625,597,484,987 layers tall. You start with 1; raise 3 to the power of 1 to get 3; raise 3 to the power of 3 to get 27; raise 3 to the power of 27 to get 7625597484987; raise 3 to the power of 7625597484987 to get a number much larger than the number of atoms in the universe, but which could still be written down in base 10, on 100 square kilometers of paper; then raise 3 to that power; and continue until you've exponentiated 7625597484987 times. That's 3^^^3. It's the smallest simple inconceivably huge number I know.
Now here's the moral dilemma. If neither event is going to happen to you personally, but you still had to choose one or the other:
Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?
I think the answer is obvious. How about you?
I have been reading less wrong about 6 month but this is my first post. I'm not an expert but an interested amateur. I read this post about 3 weeks ago and thought it was a joke. After working through replies and following links, I get it is a serious question with serious consequences in the world today. I don’t think my comments duplicate others already in the thread so here goes…
Let’s call this a “one blink” discomfort (it comes and goes in a blink) and let’s say that on average each person gets one every 10 minutes during their waking hours. In reality it is probably more, but you forget about such things almost as quick as they happen. If it is “right” to send one person to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 from a one blink discomfort, it is right to send 6 people per hour to the same fate for each of the sixteen waking hours per day, for a total of 96 people per day and 35,040 people each year.
And if it is right to send 35,040 to 50 years of torture to save 3^^^3 people for a single year from all one blink discomforts, then it is right to send another 35,040 to the same fate in order to save 3^^^3 people from all two blink discomforts, assuming each person on average get a two blink discomfort (it comes and goes in two blinks) thrice per hour. We have now saved the multiverse from all one and two bink discomforts for one year at the cost of sending 70,080 people to 50 years torture.
By the time the first person comes out of torture 50 years later, over 3.5 million people will have followed them into the torture chambers to save everyone else from discomforts lasting two blinks or less. If you follow the logic through from one blink up to each person gets one mild cold or some such per year that inflicts 2 days of discomfort, and you are sending untold trillions to 50 years torture every year. It seems to me a significant minority of the population would be in the torture chambers at any one time to save the majority from discomfort.
My question to the torturers is how far are you willing to take your logic before you look at yourself in the mirror and see a monster?
3^^^3 is very very very very large.
If we're sending untold trillions of people to torture every year, out of 3^^^3 people total, that means that over the whole history of our universe, future and past, we have a vanishingly small chance of seeing a single person in our universe get taken away for torture. Two people is even more negligible. In the meantime, all discomforts up to the level of one mild cold get prevented for everyone.
Heck, I'd be willing to absorb all the torture-probability our universe would receive for myself, just so I wouldn't have to suffer through the mild cold I'm having right now. I take a greater risk by walking down the stairs every day. Where do I sign up?