[Linkpost] “Infinite Dust Specks Are Worse Than One Torture” by Vasco Grilo🔸

This is a link post. [Subtitle.] The utilitarians were right! This is a crosspost for Infinite Dust Specks Are Worse Than One Torture by Bentham's Bulldog, which was originally published on Bentham's Newsletter on 20 March 2026. Bentham's Bulldog published a post 2 days later responding to comments on the 1st post. 1 Introduction You hear the torture vs dust specks example come up a lot when discussing the alleged vices of utilitarianism. Emile Torres once wrote: On another occasion, Yudkowsky argued that in a forced-choice situation you should prefer that a single person is tortured relentlessly for 50 years than for some unfathomable number of people to suffer the almost imperceptible discomfort of having a single speck of dust in their eyes. Just do the moral arithmetic — or, as he puts it, “Shut up and multiply!” Suffice it to say that most philosophers would vehemently object to this conclusion. This is extremely misleading. If one bothers to read Eliezer's piece on the subject (rather than opportunistically scanning it for things that sound bad out of context and then gleefully spreading them across the internet), they will see he has arguments for biting the bullet. He doesn’t just instruct [...] --- Outline: (00:33) 1. Introduction (02:26) 2. The opposite of love on the spectrum (12:36) 3. Risk (16:02) 4. The extremely simple argument (18:32) 5. Scope neglect (20:00) 6. Conclusion --- First published: April 7th, 2026 Source: Linkpost URL: --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.