Yeah this (along with the "billion headaches" inanity) rests on a fallacy: insisting an abstraction can be measured as a quantity when it clearly cannot. This t

Yeah this (along with the "billion headaches" inanity) rests on a fallacy: insisting an abstraction can be measured as a quantity when it clearly cannot. This trick is usually done by blindly averaging together some concrete quantities and claiming it represents the abstraction. The illusion is fostered by "local continuity" of these abstractions - if pulling your earlobe causes suffering, pulling harder causes more suffering. And of course the "mathiness" gives an aura of rigor and rationality. But a terrible error in quantitative reasoning occurs when you break locality: going from pulled earlobe to emotional loss, or pulled earlobe to pulled antennae, etc. The very nature of the abstraction - "suffering," "badness," - changes between entities and situations, so the one formula cannot possibly apply. ETA: see also the McNamara fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy