Uncertainty about the expected moral value of the long-term future: is reducing human extinction risk valuable?

Abstract

The future can be enormously valuable if it contains a large population of sentient beings. Multiple authors have noted that, to improve the value of the long-term future, we should reduce the risk of human extinction. This would increase the expected size of the future population, which is good if one expects the average moral value of a life to be positive. However, a future without human extinction is not necessarily more valuable than a future in which humanity goes extinct. To assess the value of reducing human extinction risk, I first look at the expected moral value of the long-term future. Moral uncertainty between Totalism and Asymmetric Views makes it difficult to assess the expected moral value of a single possible future. However, even if the future would be worse than extinction, reducing the risk of human extinction risk could still be positive; reducing the sources of human extinction risk will also reduce the risk of global catastrophe. I argue that we should expect global catastrophes to have a negative effect on the value of the long-term future if they do not lead to extinction. If global catastrophes are unlikely to lead to extinction, this would be a reason in favour of reducing the sources of extinction risk. In conclusion, the expected moral value of human extinction risk reduction depends on one’s moral uncertainty between Totalism and Asymmetric Views and on the likelihood of global catastrophes to lead to extinction.