Abstract

Many people assume that the extinction of humanity would be a bad thing. This article scrutinizes this apparent badness and demonstrates that on most plausible consequentialist frameworks, the extinction of humanity is not necessarily bad. The best accounts of the badness of the extinction of humanity focus on the loss of potential utility, but this loss can be offset if it is the result of sufficiently large gains by the present generation. Plausible means of calculating the goodness of outcomes accordingly suggest hastening extinction even in some circumstances where the alternative is a long period of human existence at a high level.