by Magnus Vinding. First published in September 2022.
Many people have the intuition that extinction would be bad. A problem, however, is that the term “extinction” carries many different connotations, and extinction may be considered bad for many different reasons. For instance, an extinction scenario might be considered bad because it involves frustrated preferences, violations of consent, or lethal violence. Yet extinction scenarios need not involve any of these elements in principle. By considering thought experiments that involve extinction without involving any of the elements listed above, we can get a better sense of what might explain the intuition that extinction would be bad. In this post, I will present a thought experiment that casts doubt on the notion that extinction would be bad or morally objectionable because it would prevent the creation of future happy lives.
Introduction
It is often implied that the worst thing about extinction is that it could prevent a potentially vast number of happy lives from coming into existence (see e.g. Parfit, 1984, pp. 453-454; Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2014, pp. 375-377; Ord, 2020, pp. 43-44). Conversely, the intuitive badness of extinction is sometimes invoked in support of the purported value of creating happy lives (see e.g. Holtug, 2004, pp. 139-140; Mogensen, 2022, p. 11).
The latter line of argument is problematic because the issue of extinction potentially draws other elements into play than that of creating happy lives, e.g. the violation of existing preferences (Knutsson, 2015). To control for such potentially distorting factors, we can devise a thought experiment that excludes these extraneous elements. I will present such a thought experiment in the following section, and I will proceed to argue that this thought experiment questions the value and moral importance of creating new happy lives (for their own sake).
Thought experiment: A world of voluntary non-procreation
Recall the three elements mentioned above: frustrated preferences, violations of consent, and lethal violence. These elements are so commonly associated with extinction that it might seem difficult to imagine extinction scenarios without them. Yet extinction scenarios free of those elements are in fact conceivable (even if they may not be realistic), as illustrated by the following hypothetical world:
A world of voluntary non-procreation
Imagine a world that consists only of people who have a strong preference not to procreate. These people are not in any way harmed or worse off by their voluntary non-procreation (we can imagine that society is arranged such that everyone is taken care of when they become old, e.g. by insentient robots). Nor do the people in this world regret the fact that their non-procreation will result in extinction; in fact, they are at peace with this outcome, and even prefer it over the alternative. Peaceful extinction through voluntary non-procreation is what everyone in this hypothetical world wants and what everyone considers morally best (or least bad). And this is eventually what happens in this world: in accordance with their own will, everyone refrains from procreating, and extinction eventually occurs without any violence being involved.
(A similar thought experiment is found in Knutsson, 2015.)
Would extinction be bad or morally wrong in the world of voluntary non-procreation?
It is natural to wonder whether the extinction that occurs in the world of voluntary non-procreation is bad, and to further ask whether it is morally wrong for the people in that world not to procreate. At first sight, it is not clear what would be bad or morally wrong about this extinction outcome (compared to alternative scenarios that involve continued procreation). After all, no one has their preferences or their consent violated, nor is anyone subjected to violence of any kind. Moreover, one could argue that extinction would be the least bad outcome in this hypothetical world, both because it would not violate the preferences or the consent of existing people (it would even satisfy their preferences), and because it would prevent all bads for future generations, including their potential suffering, preference frustrations, violence, and death.
Yet proponents of the moral importance of creating happy lives may argue that this hypothetical extinction scenario is extremely suboptimal, assuming that continued procreation could have created new happy lives. And those who assign great moral importance to the creation of happy lives would presumably further argue that the people in the world of voluntary non-procreation are doing something morally wrong, perhaps even something atrociously wrong, if they could have brought trillions of happy beings into existence (Parfit, 1984, pp. 453-454).
But this view appears to have implausible implications. For example, it would seem to imply that the people in the world of voluntary non-procreation are morally obliged to bring happy beings into the world (assuming that they could create such beings). This is arguably an implausible moral obligation in general — especially if it implies that one should incur significant opportunity costs in terms of reducing suffering (Vinding, 2022). And the obligation seems more implausible still when it goes unanimously against the preferences and moral judgments of all existing beings (e.g. one could think that it becomes less plausible in such a world for contractarian, contractualist, or preference-respecting reasons).
Most damningly, in its stronger consequentialist forms (e.g. classical utilitarianism), the view described above would imply that it would be right to force the people in the world of voluntary non-procreation to procreate, again contrary to their preferences and their consent. Or rather, this implication would follow provided that forceful action is the only way to bring about a large happy future population. Let us stipulate that it is the only way, for the sake of argument. Specifically, let us assume that we can push a button that would force people in this hypothetical world to procreate such that they create a vast number of new happy people. (To get a stronger version of this thought experiment, we could assume that the button also forces all existing people to experience intense suffering for a significant fraction of their lives, while also assuming that this suffering will not affect the future generations that they are forced to give rise to.)
This puts consequentialists who endorse the moral importance of creating happy lives in a tricky dilemma. They can either push the button and force the people in this hypothetical world to procreate against their will, which is arguably implausible — at the very least, it seems questionable to say that it would be morally right to force people in this hypothetical world to procreate (especially if doing so would also force these people to endure large amounts of intense suffering). Alternatively, such consequentialists could argue that the moral importance of creating happy lives is not sufficient to override the consent (let alone the intense suffering) of an existing population in which everyone has strong preferences against procreating. Yet if they opt for this second response, it would seem to follow that the moral importance of creating happy beings is not that great, since it means that the creation of countless generations of happy people cannot justify overriding the preferences of a single generation (or in the stronger version of the thought experiment: that it cannot override the preferences and the intense suffering of a single generation).
Either way, the dilemma questions the moral importance of creating happy lives for their own sake.
Caution about “appeals to extinction”
A concluding recommendation is that “appeals to extinction” in favor of the value or moral importance of creating happy lives need to be made with care. That is, when proponents of the moral importance of creating happy lives seek to support their view by appealing to extinction scenarios, they should ideally refer to the scenario described in “a world of voluntary non-procreation” or a similar scenario that avoids extraneous factors such as preference frustrations and violence (Knutsson, 2015).
When these distorting factors are removed, the “appeal to extinction” in favor of the moral importance of creating happy lives seems to lose much of its force.
References
Holtug, N. (2004). Person-Affecting Moralities. In Ryberg, J. & Tännsjö, T. (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion. Kluwer Law International.
Knutsson, S. (2015). The ‘Asymmetry’ and extinction thought experiments. Ungated
Lazari-Radek, K. & Singer, P. (2014). The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics. Oxford University Press.
Mogensen, A. (2022). The weight of suffering. Ungated
Ord, T. (2020/2021). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Hachette Books.
Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press.
Vinding, M. (2022). Reply to Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”. Ungated