I have a lot of detractors not smart enough to understand large numbers. I say X is better than (bignum >> googolplex) people suffering the tiniest noticeable pain, and the # gets rounded down to "billions" or "quintillions". https://twitter.com/just_an_initial/status/940110359133851648 …
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Where the preference chain is "Clearly X people getting two dust specks in their eyes is better than googol*X people getting one dust speck in their eye" (...) "One victim for 50 years is better than a googol people tormented for fifty years minus one second."
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I'm just saying that "shut up and multiply" is an unsupported claim that the utility impact of adding more dust specks is linear, and the conclusion itself depends on at least the assumption that it grows without bound.
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So what is the exact amount of pain such that it's better that a googol people have that pain rather than one person have the tiniest physically possible increment more pain than that? Or do you also deny that preferences should be noncircular?
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The numbers don't even need to be that large. Suppose 1 speck of dust in the eye results in lost productivity of 1 second and suppose the average value of human time is $10/hour. 1 second times $10/hour times 1 quintillion people is 2.7 quadrillion dollars of lost productivity.
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Even only a billion dust specks causes $2.7 million dollars of damage. Which is more than average lifetime earnings of $1.8 million, http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2009/mar-apr/article1.asp …, although less than some estimates of the insurable value of a human life https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/VSL%20Guidance%202013.pdf …
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Yeah, see, that argument I don't buy, which is why I picked a bignum rather than a trillion. Alas, many folks who refuse the naive multiplication fail to realize that there's a different *type* of argument once you say googolplex, based on preference transitivity.
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I don't follow. Whose preferences? If the individuals, then I don't see how the argument type changes. If the whole, then preferences not necessarily transitive by the Condorcet paradox.
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