[To] the last [be] human

Résumé 0

This paper presents a critique of the ethical claims underwriting what it calls the New Futurism. The New Futurists are a group of thinkers who are associated with Silicon Valley Dataism, and who, armed with Bayesian arguments, argue that it is morally imperative for humankind to colonize the solar system. This paper attacks not the general idea of humankind expanding into space, but this specific formulation of the argument for space expansionism, as it is voiced in the work of William MacAskill and a few others. I suggest that the authors of these New Futurist arguments for space embrace as ethical and rational the pursuit of what Derek Parfit called the “Repugnant Conclusion,” and in so doing break with the very economy of moral reasoning: essentially arguing that what we ought to do implies acting in such a way that will, even within their own speculative imaginings of the matter, make every future individual’s life worse. Taking this into account, the paper suggests (without arguing for or denying the possibility of such cases) that any legitimate arguments for expansion of the human habitat beyond the planet would need to remain human – that is to say, they would need to show the ethical value of expanding beyond the Earth in terms of the quality of the life that it might deliver to a finite number of beings who themselves live the sort of finite and ecologically vulnerable lives that we now live on this planet.