I’m not a utilitarian, but if I were, I would emphasize quality over quantity. There are two ways in which quantity can harm quality. The first is when there’s a trade-off and spending resources on quantity causes you to spend fewer resources on quality. So if you spend money and attention on implementing panspermia, you can’t spend the same money and attention on improving the quality of life of sentient systems. The second is even worse: On those margins where quality is negative, quantity actively hurts the total. So you had better be really sure that the quality is positive before you spend resources on quantity. In the context of panspermia, I’d worry about the suffering and preference-frustration that will be caused by the project.
I’m not a utilitarian, however, so I wouldn’t donate to such a project either way.
I’m not a utilitarian, but if I were, I would emphasize quality over quantity. There are two ways in which quantity can harm quality. The first is when there’s a trade-off and spending resources on quantity causes you to spend fewer resources on quality. So if you spend money and attention on implementing panspermia, you can’t spend the same money and attention on improving the quality of life of sentient systems. The second is even worse: On those margins where quality is negative, quantity actively hurts the total. So you had better be really sure that the quality is positive before you spend resources on quantity. In the context of panspermia, I’d worry about the suffering and preference-frustration that will be caused by the project.
I’m not a utilitarian, however, so I wouldn’t donate to such a project either way.