The potential future contains trillions of trillions of conscious beings living across billions of years. Ensuring this future exists is the most important thing anyone can do.
Overview
The number of future beings who could exist if humanity expands through the cosmos is so astronomically large that their potential interests morally outweigh almost any present concern.
Classification
- Geographic concentration
- Oxford, Bay Area, various EA hubs globally
- Tags
- philosophy
- security
- Scenario type (full)
- Utopian / Posthuman scenario
- Human position
- Variable: what matters is that consciousness continues and expands, regardless of substrate
- Time horizon
- Deep future (thousands to billions of years); but actions required are immediate
- Discourse status
- Mainstream in longtermist and EA circles; contested by critics who see it as disconnected from present harms
Impacts
- Mechanism
- Longtermist utilitarian calculation: the expected value of the future is so large that reducing even a small probability of extinction produces more expected good than any present-day intervention.
- Domain impacts
- Labor & Income Not a primary concern; present labor conditions are secondary to the long-term future. Education Prioritize STEM, existential risk studies, and space science. Governance & Democracy Global coordination to reduce existential risk is the primary governance objective. War & Security Existential risk reduction is the ultimate security priority. Inequality & Class Present inequality is acknowledged but deprioritized relative to future trillions. Culture & Art Culture is valued instrumentally for maintaining civilization. Meaning & Purpose Meaning comes from ensuring the cosmic endowment is realized. Family & Reproduction Not a primary concern; present family structures secondary. Health & Longevity Health matters instrumentally; longevity extends productive contribution to x-risk reduction. Rights & Agency Rights of potential future beings are given weight; present rights important but not absolute. Environment Environmental sustainability matters only insofar as it supports long-term survival. Existential Survival The entire scenario IS about existential risk: reducing extinction probability is the highest moral priority.
Discourse
Key institutions
Notes on critique
Pop culture
Featured works
Cultural note
Notes on pop-culture references
Acceptance
- Key assumptions
- Assumes utilitarian ethics are correct; assumes future beings' interests can be meaningfully calculated; assumes cosmic expansion is achievable.
- Primary audiences
- EA and longtermist communities, existential risk researchers, space science advocates
Personas
- Persona 1
- The Longtermist Philosopher – Calculates expected future value and concludes existential risk reduction is the most important cause.
- Persona 2
- The Cosmic Optimist – Envisions consciousness filling the galaxy and considers our choices the most consequential in history.
- Hard-believer profile
- Name & Age: Dr. Oliver Strand, 34. Occupation: Researcher at a longtermist think tank, Oxford. Core Conviction: If humanity goes extinct, we lose not just 8 billion lives but trillions upon trillions of potential conscious beings. The expected value of the future is so vast that reducing even a tiny probability of extinction produces more good than any present-day intervention. Biggest Fear: That the light of consciousness is snuffed out when it could have filled the galaxy. Biggest Hope: That humanity fills the reachable universe with conscious flourishing across billions of years.
References
Notes on canonical texts
Notes on further references
A scene from this future
The Calculation
An office at a think tank, Oxford, 2030
Oliver stared at the number on his screen. He'd run the calculation a thousand times, and it never stopped being vertigo-inducing.
10^38. That was the lower bound—the conservative estimate of the number of conscious beings who could exist if humanity survived and expanded through the reachable universe. Ten to the thirty-eighth power. A number so large it made every other number in ethics feel like a rounding error.
His colleague knocked. "The malaria funding report came back. The foundation wants to know if we're reallocating."
Oliver felt the familiar tension. The malaria nets saved lives. Real lives, now, today. Children who would die without them. Every utilitarian instinct he had screamed that saving a child's life was good.
But the calculation said something else. The calculation said that if there was even a 0.001% chance that his existential risk work could prevent human extinction, the expected value dwarfed every malaria net on Earth. Not because malaria didn't matter. But because 10^38 was a very, very large number.
He made the recommendation. He didn't feel good about it. He didn't feel bad about it either. He felt the specific numbness of someone who has followed a chain of logic to its conclusion and found the conclusion monstrous and irrefutable at the same time.
His mother called that evening. She was raising money for a local food bank. "Could you donate?" she asked.
"Of course," he said. He donated. It was a rounding error in his annual giving. Most of his income went to existential risk organizations.
He looked at the stars that night—not with wonder, but with a sense of obligation so vast it felt like gravity. All those potential minds. All that potential flourishing. The weight of a future that might never exist pressed down on him like an atmosphere made of mathematics.
He went to bed and dreamed of numbers.
Last updated 22 May 2026