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

[Edwardo Piet]

Right, and all sufferers suffer equally was not the case in your pinprick example, in that you had one person suffering 10,000 times more than any other individual. In this instance the person suffering 10,000 times is 10,000 times more potent in affecting our aversion to suffering, thus we have reason to prevent that suffering more than the marginal group suffering.

As I have already explained, if more people suffering equally can be worse than less of them then that means that quantity alone can outweigh the quality of suffering.

So above you say that a high quantity of low sufferers (many people suffering from pinpricks) can't outweigh one person suffering 10,000 times more than any of them. Which means that 10,000 individuals suffering pinpricks can't be equal to one person suffering 10,000 times the weight of a pinprick, right?

But here you say:

So by that right you must conclude that 10,000 people suffering 1x is literally equal to 1 person suffering 10,000x, because the amount of suffering quantitatively is identical between groups.

Here you completely contradict yourself. You say that 10,000 people suffering a pain value of '1' is equal to 1 person suffering 10,000X that pain.

I agree with the first option but the difference is, I'm consistent. I understand that when no sufferers individually suffer more than anyone else this means that they can't possibly add up in reality because sufferers only suffer as individuals. We can't feel anyone else's pain we can only interpret theirs and feel our own pain. And if we could 'feel someone else's pain' then it would be our pain too so we'd feel equally and so neither of our pain would be worse than each other. It would be equivalent to 10,000 identical pinpricks or 10,000 identical torture levels of pain.

Even quantities of pain in the same individual can only add up if they're not all absolutely identical. Because if they're all absolutely identical then not one of those experiences will increase the suffering. If 10,000 identical pinpricks to the same person pisses them off a hell of a lot more than one it is because that those experiences aren't identical. If they were identical then all the other 9,999 pinpricks after the first pinprick could not be experienced as any worse than the first one, which means they don't add up in any meaningful way whatsoever. And by not in a 'meaningful way' I mean they don't add up in anyway outside your own imagination if they're truly identical. They don't add up outside of your fetish for adding things up.