"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?
Let me attempt to shut up and multiply.
Let's make the assumption that a single second of torture is equivalent to 1 billion dust specks to the eye. Since that many dust specks is enough to sandblast your eye, it seems reasonable approximation.
This means that 50 years of this torture is equivalent to giving 1 single person (50 365.25 24 60 60 * 1,000,000,000) dust specks to the eye.
According to Google's calculator,
(50 365.25 24 60 60 1,000,000,000)/(3^39) = 0.389354356 (50 365.25 24 60 60 1,000,000,000)/(3^38) = 1.16806307
Ergo, If someone convinces you 50 years of Torture, or 3^^3(3^27) people get Specks, pick Specks.
But If someone convinces you 50 years of Torture, or (3^50) people get Specks, pick Torture,
This appears to be a fair attempt to shut up and multiply.
However, 3^^^3 is incomprehensibly bigger than any of that.
You could turn every atom into the observable universe into a speck of dust. At wikipedia's almost 10^80 atoms, that is still not enough dust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
You could turn every planck length in the obseravble universe into a speck of dust. At Answerbag's 2.5 x 10^184 cubic planck lengths, that's still not enough dust. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/33135
At this point, I thought maybe that another universe made of 10^80 computronium atoms is running universes like ours as simulation on individual atoms. That means 10^80 2.5 x 10^184 cubic planck lengths of dust. But that's still not enough dust. Again. 2.510^264 specks of dust is still WAY less than 3^^^3
At this point, I considered checking if I could get enough dust specks if I literally converted everything in all Everett branches since the big bang beginning of time into dust, but my math abilities fail me. I'll try coming back to this later.
Edit: My multiplication symbols were getting turned into Italics. Should be fixed now.