Because living in paradise while others were tortured is one of the worst fates I can think of.
I admit that the terms of my hypothetical question are very forced and artificial, but I'm trying to make a point about how much self-sacrifice most people are capable of.
I can't decide if you're far, far more self-sacrificing and noble than I think I could ever be, or if this imagined Hell is too much of an abstraction, making it a whole lot easier to agree to suffer it for the sake of others.
As I've laid out this hypothetical question, it's "easier" in a sense than it might otherwise be to accept the position of sacrifice, because while you'd be making a very difficult decision, you wouldn't be under the strain of the actual torment while making the decision. It's a grit-your-teeth, make the decision you think is right, then wait for the shit to hit the fan sort of thing.
Are you really grasping how horrible a vision of Hell I'm proposing? I suppose you could be, and that is for you even more motivation to save others from it, even at your own terrible expense. But understand this: if you experienced this Hell for even one second, and someone then gave you the choice between experiencing that Hell for just one more second, or running across a floor covered in broken glass and razor blades to a place where you'd have to stand on a flaming grill, pick up a saw, and saw off one of your own arms -- you'd choose the whole routine with the razor blades and the saw as a walk in the park by comparison.
That about sums it up for me. Balance of probablities means that it is better to go to heaven, but by less than one soul's worth.
I certainly don't think I'm more valuable than others, or that saving myself from such suffering at the expense of others is a fair trade. Nevertheless, deep down I'm too selfish. I think in a certain sense we're all ultimately selfish. For myself, I can't see accepting such horror when I know that I'd never even get the slightest comfort afterward for making the "right" decision, and knowing that I'd be blissfully free from even the slightest pang of guilt for making the selfish decision.
I believe we all choose what's best for ourselves at any given moment -- even though "best" may sometimes be no more than the least terrible of a set of crappy choices. What separates "good" people from "bad" people is that good people highly value the welfare of others, and that valuation becomes part of how they decide what is best
for themselves. The cost of doing things that would typically be termed "evil" or, by the more ordinary use of the word, "selfish", is the guilt we'd feel, the sacrifice of values we don't want to give up, a loss of the self we want to see ourselves as which would be too hard to bear.
I do believe there are people who would be capable of this kind of self sacrifice, but I'm not sure how many there would be if the decision had to be made with a full and deep understanding of the sacrifice in question. Even for those rare few, I'm not sure whether I'd consider their choice for self-sacrifice noble or foolish.