Fair points. Your first paragraph seems like a good reason for me to take back the example of freedom/autonomy, although I think the other examples remain relevant, at least for nontrivial minority views. (I imagine, for example, that many people wouldn’t be too concerned about adding more people to a loving future, but they would be sad about a future having no love at all, e.g. due to extinction.)
(Maybe there’s some asymmetry in people’s views toward autonomy? I share your intuition that most people would see it as silly to create people so they can have autonomy. But I also imagine that many people would see extinction as a bad affront to the autonomy that future people otherwise would have had, since extinction would be choosing for them that their lives aren’t worthwhile.)
only about 50% in the UK sample thought extinction was uniquely bad
This seems like more than enough to support the claim that a wide variety of groups disvalue extinction, on (some) reflection.
I think you’re generally right that a significant fraction of non-utilitarian views wouldn’t be extremely concerned by extinction, especially under pessimistic empirical assumptions about the future. (I’d be more hesitant to say that many would see it as an actively good thing, at least since many common views seem like they’d strongly disapprove of the harm that would be involved in many plausible extinction scenarios.) So I’d weaken my original claim to something like: a significant fraction of non-utilitarian views would see extinction as very bad, especially under somewhat optimistic assumptions about the future (much weaker assumptions than e.g. “humanity is inherently super awesome”).
Fair points. Your first paragraph seems like a good reason for me to take back the example of freedom/autonomy, although I think the other examples remain relevant, at least for nontrivial minority views. (I imagine, for example, that many people wouldn’t be too concerned about adding more people to a loving future, but they would be sad about a future having no love at all, e.g. due to extinction.)
(Maybe there’s some asymmetry in people’s views toward autonomy? I share your intuition that most people would see it as silly to create people so they can have autonomy. But I also imagine that many people would see extinction as a bad affront to the autonomy that future people otherwise would have had, since extinction would be choosing for them that their lives aren’t worthwhile.)
This seems like more than enough to support the claim that a wide variety of groups disvalue extinction, on (some) reflection.
I think you’re generally right that a significant fraction of non-utilitarian views wouldn’t be extremely concerned by extinction, especially under pessimistic empirical assumptions about the future. (I’d be more hesitant to say that many would see it as an actively good thing, at least since many common views seem like they’d strongly disapprove of the harm that would be involved in many plausible extinction scenarios.) So I’d weaken my original claim to something like: a significant fraction of non-utilitarian views would see extinction as very bad, especially under somewhat optimistic assumptions about the future (much weaker assumptions than e.g. “humanity is inherently super awesome”).