I think comparisons to paper cuts and other minor harms don’t work very well with people’s intuitions: a lot of people feel like (and sometimes explicitly endorse that) no number of paper cuts can outweigh torturous agony. See this old LW post and the disagreements around it.
Instead, my experience is people’s intuitions work better when thinking in probabilities or quantities: what chance of suffering for a human would balance against that for a chicken? Or how many chickens suffering in that way would be equivalent to one human?
I think comparisons to paper cuts and other minor harms don’t work very well with people’s intuitions: a lot of people feel like (and sometimes explicitly endorse that) no number of paper cuts can outweigh torturous agony. See this old LW post and the disagreements around it.
Instead, my experience is people’s intuitions work better when thinking in probabilities or quantities: what chance of suffering for a human would balance against that for a chicken? Or how many chickens suffering in that way would be equivalent to one human?
Fair point, thanks!