You asked for an analysis “even from a total utilitarian, longtermist perspective.” From that perspective, I claim that preventing extinction clearly has astronomical (positive) expected value, since variance between possible futures is dominated by what the cosmic endowment is optimized for, and optimizing for utility is much more likely than optimizing for disutility. If you disagree, I’d be interested to hear why, here or on a call.
You asked for an analysis “even from a total utilitarian, longtermist perspective.” From that perspective, I claim that preventing extinction clearly has astronomical (positive) expected value, since variance between possible futures is dominated by what the cosmic endowment is optimized for, and optimizing for utility is much more likely than optimizing for disutility. If you disagree, I’d be interested to hear why, here or on a call.