Steam is not simply “liquid water but a bit warmer”; steam has very different properties altogether.
I agree pains of different intensities have different properties. My understanding is that the Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI) relies on this to some extent to define their 4 pain categories. However, I do not understand how that undermines my point. Water and water vapor have different properties, but we can still compare their temperature. Liwekise, I think we can compare the intensity of different pain experiences even if they have different properties.
To extend this (very imperfect) analogy, imagine we lived in a world where steam killed people but (liquid) water didn’t (because of properties specific to steam, like being inhalable or something). In this case, the claim “reducing sufficiently many units of lukewarm water would still be better than reducing a unit of steam” would miss the point by the lights of someone who cares about death.
I seem to agree. Assuming water had a potential to kill people of exactly 0, and steam had a potential to kill people above 0, no amount of water would have the potential to kill as many people as some amount of steam. However, I do not think this undermines my point. When I say that “averting sufficiently many hours of pain of a very low intensity would still be better than averting 1 h of pain of a very high intensity”, the very low intensity still has to be higher than an intensity of exactly 0.
Thanks for clarifying.
I agree pains of different intensities have different properties. My understanding is that the Welfare Footprint Institute (WFI) relies on this to some extent to define their 4 pain categories. However, I do not understand how that undermines my point. Water and water vapor have different properties, but we can still compare their temperature. Liwekise, I think we can compare the intensity of different pain experiences even if they have different properties.
I seem to agree. Assuming water had a potential to kill people of exactly 0, and steam had a potential to kill people above 0, no amount of water would have the potential to kill as many people as some amount of steam. However, I do not think this undermines my point. When I say that “averting sufficiently many hours of pain of a very low intensity would still be better than averting 1 h of pain of a very high intensity”, the very low intensity still has to be higher than an intensity of exactly 0.