From New Statesman, August 10:
Given the amount of suffering on Earth, the value of the continued existence of the planet is an open question.
In recent decades it has often been said that we are living at the “hinge of history”, an unprecedented period during which a catastrophic event such as rapid climate change, nuclear war or the release of a synthesised pathogen may bring an end to human and perhaps all sentient life on the planet.
Most people think that such extinction would be bad, in fact one of the worst things that could happen. It’s plausible that the process leading to various forms of extinction, and extinction itself, would be bad for many of us, given that our lives are, overall, good for us and that, all else being equal, the longer they are the better. But it’s also plausible that extinction would be good for some individuals – those in the final stages of an agonising terminal illness, for example, whose pain can no longer be controlled by drugs. This means one key factor in judging the overall value of non-extinction will involve weighing these disparate interests against each other.
How might we do that? Let’s focus on sudden extinction. Imagine that some huge asteroid is heading to earth, which if it hits will remove any possibility of life on Earth. If you have the power to deflect it, should you do so, from a moral point of view? If extinction would be bad for all sentient beings, both now and in the future, the answer “yes” seems hard to argue with. But, as we just saw, that’s not the case.
Consider the huge amount of suffering that continuing existence will bring with it, not only for humans, and perhaps even for “post-humans”, but also for sentient non-humans, who vastly outnumber us and almost certainly would continue to do so. As far as humans alone are concerned, Hilary Greaves and Will MacAskill at the University of Oxford’s Global Priorities Institute estimate that there could be one quadrillion (1015) people to come – an estimate they describe as conservative.
These numbers, and the scale of suffering to be put into the balance alongside the good elements in individuals’ lives, are difficult to fathom and so large that it’s not obvious that you should deflect the asteroid. In fact, there seem to be some reasons to think you shouldn’t.....
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Well there you go, all problems solved.
