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Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development

nickbostrom.com · 2,682 words · saved by 1 readers

ABSTRACT. With very advanced technology, a very large population of people living happy lives could be sustained in the accessible region of the universe. For every year that development of such technologies and colonization of the universe is delayed, there is therefore an opportunity cost: a potential good, lives worth living, is not being realized. Given some plausible assumptions, this cost is extremely large. However, the lesson for utilitarians is not that we ought to maximize the pace of technological development, but rather that we ought to maximize its safety, i.e. the probability that colonization will eventually occur. I. THE RATE OF LOSS OF POTENTIAL LIVES As I write these words, suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms, unused energy is being flushed down black holes, and our great common endowment of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a cosmic scale. These are resources that an advanced civilization could have used to create value-structures, s

Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development ☾ I. The Rate of Loss of Potential Lives As I write these words, suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms, unused energy is being flushed down black holes, and our great common endowment of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a cosmic scale. These are resources that an advanced civilization could have used to create value-structures, such as sentient beings living worthwhile lives. The rate of this loss boggles the mind. One recent paper speculates, using loose theoretical considerations ba

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