A common cognitive illusion causes real harm.

The belief that humanity must continue at all costs certainly seems to make sense. How else can we continue to fill the universe with consciousness and thus value? If we are working on The Most Important Thing, then our lives have meaning and cosmic importance. Yay us!

This reasoning is partially correct. Only consciousness - subjective experience - allows for value. Any planet without conscious life – even one teeming with life (plants and bacteria, for example) – has the exact same value as empty space.

This, however, doesn’t mean that more conscious entities are “good.” 

Consider this hypothetical: 

Tomorrow, we discover that our universe is teaming with trillions of conscious entities who are much smarter and happier than humans are (or ever could be in our current form).

Would that impact the value or meaning of your conscious existence in any way?

No. Your life hasn’t changed at all.

The flaw in the “Keep humanity going” reasoning is simple. If you, as an individual, have ever really suffered, you know your anguish could not be offset by current happy aliens in the Andromeda Galaxy or sentient robots around Proxima Centauri b in a billion years.  

It took me many decades to realize this. This was the key insight I worked out while writing Losing, specifically the chapter “Biting the Philosophical Bullet.” 

In short: Just as “value” (or “meaning” or “happiness” or “goodness”) isn’t additive across individuals, it isn’t dependent upon or relative to others. 

This is one of the ways consciousness is so odd and hard to deal with rationally. It feels like more happy individuals simply must be better. But this is simply an assumption based on a cognitive bias. 

This “more is better” illusion has serious consequences because it distracts from what really matters. As spelled out in Losing (“My Expected Value Is Bigger Than Yours” in addition to “Biting the Philosophical Bullet”) as long as conscious individuals are suffering, alleviating their agony actually is The Most Important Thing. 

We don’t have to pull out a spreadsheet or have brain damage to care about verifiable current suffering instead of hypothetical future happiness. Even if we haven’t personally experienced the asymmetry of happiness and torment, it shouldn’t be that difficult to recognize. It just entails actually paying attention to our inherent empathy and rationally extending it beyond those with whom we have a personal affinity.