RE: Is 10,000 people suffering identically equal bad as one of them?
November 2, 2010 at 9:12 pm
(November 2, 2010 at 5:25 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: I'll make it really fucking simple: If 10,000 people suffer identically, no one feels more pain than anyone else. So why should you or would you care 10,000 times more, or any more at all? Why care about quantity of sufferers if not one sufferer suffers any more than any other? If you think that if enough people suffer from pin pricks you can consider that to morally outweigh one person being severely tortured, then I give up: All I can say is I find that repugnant.
Seriously, you gave the example of 10,000 people suffering identically, if they all suffer identically then the value suffering (x) can be given the value 1 (because there is no deviation in their experience of x).
Therefore, when you have 10,000 people experiencing x, compared to the 1 person experiencing x, you have one group of 10,0000X and 1 of 1X, thus given the choice to chose to save one group over the other, and provided that you have an aversion to suffering, it makes perfect sense for you to chose to eliminate the most instances of x possible in any one action.
Your second part "If you think that if enough people suffer from pin pricks you can consider that to morally outweigh one person being severely tortured" has nothing to do with your initial example. That example would be group 1 is one person experiencing 10,0000x and group 2 is 10,000 people experiencing 1x. It's a totally different case.
How did you determine that it's better to end the suffering of the 1 person experiencing 10,000x than it is the 10,000 people experiencing 1x? Just your subjective opinion right?
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