If future colonization is bad, humans won’t do it. If it’s good, they will. The option value of avoiding extinction is only positive.
Jan M. Brauner 18, PhD Candidate at University of Erlangen-Nuremburg, Freelance Researcher at the Center for Effective Altruism, BS in Physics from the University of Erlangen-Nuremburg, and Friederike M. Grosse-Holz, PhD in Plant Sciences from the University of Oxford, Master’s from The University of Freiburg, Master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology of Plants from Heidelberg University, BS in Molecular Biotechnology from TU Munich, Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, “The Expected Value of Extinction Risk Reduction is Positive”, Effective Altruism, 12/6/2018, https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/the-expected-value-of-extinction-risk-reduction-is-positive/
1.3: Future agents could later decide not to colonize space (option value)
We are often uncertain about what the right thing to do is. If we can defer the decision to someone wiser than ourselves, this is generally a good call. We can also defer across time: we can keep our options open for now, and hope our descendants will be able to make better decisions. This option value may give us a reason to prefer to keep our options open.
For instance, our descendants may be in a better position to judge whether space colonization would be good or bad. If they can see that space colonization would be negative, they can refrain from (further) colonizing space: They have the option to limit the harm. In contrast, if humanity goes extinct, the option of (post)-human space colonization is forever lost. So avoiding extinction creates ‘option value’(e.g. Macaskill).[38] This specific type of ‘option value’ - from future agents choosing not to colonize space - and not the more general value of keeping options open, is what we will be referring to throughout this section.[39] This type of option value exist for nearly all moral views, and is very unlikely to be negative.[40] However, as we will discuss in this chapter, this value is rather small compared to other considerations.