Moral equivalence?

I was making scrambled eggs, when a thought popped into my head.

If we can agree that inflicting pain on someone is immoral, and assuming we could accurately measure pain, would dispersing it amongst multiple people to dilute the pain per person be more, less, or equal on a 'morality scale'? Let's create a theoretical unit of pain P.
Does one person experiencing pain of 10 P morally equate to 10 people experiencing of pain of 1P?
...Of 1000 people experiencing .01P?

My initial inclination is to think that it would be slightly more moral, which would appear to be at odds with the basic math (assuming addition/multiplication actually does apply without alternate variables.)

Just curious what other people think.

I was making scrambled eggs, when a thought popped into my head.

If we can agree that inflicting pain on someone is immoral, and assuming we could accurately measure pain, would dispersing it amongst multiple people to dilute the pain per person be more, less, or equal on a 'morality scale'? Let's create a theoretical unit of pain P.
Does one person experiencing pain of 10 P morally equate to 10 people experiencing of pain of 1P?
...Of 1000 people experiencing .01P?

My initial inclination is to think that it would be slightly more moral, which would appear to be at odds with the basic math (assuming addition/multiplication actually does apply without alternate variables.)

Just curious what other people think.

I think you should include time in there too.
I feel that up to a certain amount of pain it would be morally better to have it divided over 1000 people, where the limit is that I think that at some point you just hit a pain maximum and it doesn't matter if you get more pain above that point, so if you already reached that point it's morally better to put it on one person.

Out of random here...are you talking about physical pain (as in torture, no food, sanitary etc) or mental/emotional pain like a family member dying. If it were the latter, I think it's that one person should experience it.

Is withholding pain from a masochist in fact, inflicting pain?

if you can theoretically divide it amongst as many people as possible then I would say spread it was wide and thin as possible, after so many divisions it will no longer be considered pain, therefore no suffering will come from it, therefore it is moral.

Morality is too complex and subjective to be measured quantitatively.

Out of random here...are you talking about physical pain (as in torture, no food, sanitary etc) or mental/emotional pain like a family member dying. If it were the latter, I think it's that one person should experience it.

Any pain without physical damage. I am discounting insignificant damages like harm induced by stress.

Morality is too complex and subjective to be measured quantitatively.

Do you consider pain to be the same way?

I'd like to clarify that I'm not trying to classify moral acts into objective or universal terms, just relative terms on a subjective moral scale. Kinda like an indifference curve in economics. It's subjective, but can be compared (in >, <, and = forms) to other subjective morals.

if you can theoretically divide it amongst as many people as possible then I would say spread it was wide and thin as possible, after so many divisions it will no longer be considered pain, therefore no suffering will come from it, therefore it is moral.

I am inclined to agree. Does this imply that steps toward this end are also moral to some degree?

I think you should include time in there too.
I feel that up to a certain amount of pain it would be morally better to have it divided over 1000 people, where the limit is that I think that at some point you just hit a pain maximum and it doesn't matter if you get more pain above that point, so if you already reached that point it's morally better to put it on one person.

Interesting.
Presuming that there is a maximum amount of pain that can be perceived by a person (in a fixed amount of time), both extreme ends of the spectrum appear to potential be more moral than the middle.

This time element also begs the question, does some fixed amount of pain become better or worse when it spread out over time to insignificant discomfort, or shortened to an instant of agony?

What parsifal said. I suppose this thought experiment could hold some kind of importance in terms of social and political justice...but only as some kind of abstract criteria. But ultimately, I think the nature of pain/suffering, etc., is far too complex a concept, in theoretical and practical terms, to be analyzed in this way.

Utilitarianism is a crock of shit.

Utilitarianism is a crock of shit.

If total pain was always held constant, do you think that utilitarianism would apply?

I think that the entire point in this discussion is flawed in that we can't really agree that inflicting pain on someone is always immoral.

Utilitarianism simply fails to map the spectrum of conditions and behaviours on which ethics prescribes or proscribes. Many evils have absolutely no relation to pain, happiness or pleasure, as do many goods. Many value-laden targets offer prescriptions in the opposite direction to that which Utilitarianism predicts.

In my opinion, utilitarianism is wrong about as many things as it is right about. The theory contains too many arbitrary notions and unjustifiable consequences (no pun intended).