Is 10,000 people suffering identically equal bad as one of them?

[Edwardo Piet]

'The Big Picture' is a subjective idea of "what matters most".

Yes. But it is still a picture that does not exist. There is no individual who suffers the total sum of what any one individual suffers. Nothing suffers the total sum of all individual suffering. Individual suffering actually exists in external reality, the total sum of suffering only exists in imagination.

It is not nothing... but rather dearly important to all of us.

Clearly it isn't to all of us. It isn't to me and it isn't important to anyone who agrees with me that there's no point caring about the totality of suffering when not one single individual living being experiences it.

The suffering of millions doesn't even matter if it is entirely unrelated to one's goals.

The suffering of millions doesn't matter to us if it doesn't matter to us yes, that's a tautology.

Sometimes it is a great thing that as many as possible suffer... such as when thinking of enemies.

That is irrelevant to my point that

it is still a picture that does not exist. There is no individual who suffers the total sum of what any one individual suffers

that merely states that people care about different things, it doesn't refute my point.

Believe me... if I could stop the nuisance of gnat bites across the world by having someone (anyone) be tortured horrifically, I'd volunteer.

Despite the fact you would be caring about a total sum of suffering that doesn't actually exist outside of your own fantasy? You'd happily ignore the fact that all those people receiving gnat bites were merely receiving gnat bites an the person being horrifically tortured was being horrifically tortured?

At least I could perform that service to the world.

The service of preferring gnat bites to horrific torture because you pretend that these gnat bites add up in reality when they don't? To whom do they add up? To no one - they feel gnat bites and the person tortured feels torture.

Imagined pain can fucking hurt.

Yes but that's irrelevant to my point. By gnat bites I mean very mild pain and by horrific torture I mean very very extremely severe pain. Every living being when it is feeling a gnat bite and nothing else is by definition only feeling that, and so to add all those experiences up as if they outweigh the suffering of absolutely anyone experiencing horrific torture is to care about a total sum that is irrelevant to absolutely everyone's conscious emotions in actual reality because no one feels it. No one feels the sum total of gnat bites people only feel their own gnat bites. The imagination of the sum total is a different thing entirely to the real sum total. The real sum total doesn't actually exist in conscious experience.

Starting with the premise that you care about individual suffering it makes no sense to care about the sum total of suffering because not one individual feels that. You're caring about something bizzare that doesn't exist in reality then.

I for one care that gnats exist, and I hate gnat bites. I hate mosquitos more though. One person suffers a terribly painful death (or agonizing elongated existence) and gnats are gone? Hell yes. Let someone suicidal do it though, as other people would like to live in the world without gnats.

Assuming that NO gnat ever causes as much pain whatsoever to any one person experiencing a terribly painful death then it makes no sense to care about the sum total of such gnat bites because NOONE experiences it. You're then not just caring about individuals but you're also caring about something that isn't real in experience.

No one experiences the sum total of all individuals' experience of suffering or pleasure, you care about that, you're not caring about real experience.