Comments about moral uncertainty and wild animal suffering are valid, but I think kind of unneccessary. I don’t think the argument works at all in its current form.
I think the argument is something like this:
Human existence is bad for animals because they cause a much greater probability of complete animal extinction (via anthropogenic extinction risk)
Animal life is more important than human life on net (because there’s more of them, and perhaps because non-human animals don’t pose significant extinction risk)
Therefore humans should destroy themselves.
If so, the conclusion is invalid. At most, it shows the world would be better on net if humans suddenly stopped existing. But there is something quite absurd about trying to protect animals from the risks of anthropogenic extinction… via anthropogenic extinction. The more obvious thing to do would be to reduce the risks of anthropogenic extinction.
So for the argument to work, you need to believe that it’s not possible to significantly reduce anthropogenic risk (implausible I think), but it is possible to engineer a human extinction event that is, in expectation, much less risky to animal life than an accidential human extinction event. Engineering such an extinction might well be possible, but since you only get one shot, you would surely need an implausibly high level of confidence.
Comments about moral uncertainty and wild animal suffering are valid, but I think kind of unneccessary. I don’t think the argument works at all in its current form.
I think the argument is something like this:
Human existence is bad for animals because they cause a much greater probability of complete animal extinction (via anthropogenic extinction risk)
Animal life is more important than human life on net (because there’s more of them, and perhaps because non-human animals don’t pose significant extinction risk)
Therefore humans should destroy themselves.
If so, the conclusion is invalid. At most, it shows the world would be better on net if humans suddenly stopped existing. But there is something quite absurd about trying to protect animals from the risks of anthropogenic extinction… via anthropogenic extinction. The more obvious thing to do would be to reduce the risks of anthropogenic extinction.
So for the argument to work, you need to believe that it’s not possible to significantly reduce anthropogenic risk (implausible I think), but it is possible to engineer a human extinction event that is, in expectation, much less risky to animal life than an accidential human extinction event. Engineering such an extinction might well be possible, but since you only get one shot, you would surely need an implausibly high level of confidence.