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RobbBB comments on Causal Universes - Less Wrong
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It depends. As for universes, so too for individual human beings: Is it moral (in a vacuum — we're assuming there aren't indirect harmful consequences) to kill a single individual, provided you replace him a second later with a near-perfect copy? That depends. Could you have made the clone without killing the original? If an individual's life is good, and you can create a copy of him that will also have a good life, without interfering with the original, then that act of copying may be ethically warranted, and killing either copy may be immoral.
Similarly, if you can make a copy of the whole universe without destroying the original, then, plausibly, it's just as wicked to destroy the old universe as it would be to destroy it without making a copy. You're subtracting the same amount of net utility. Of course, this is all assuming that the universe as a whole has positive value.
Regarding universes, there's a discussion of this in Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch novel, where future people debate traveling back in time to change the present, realizing that that means basically the elimination of every person presently exisiting.
Regarding individuals, I once wrote a short story about a scientist who placed his mind into the body of a clone of himself, via a destructive process (scanned his original brain synapse by synapse after slicing it up, recreated that in the clone via electro stimulation). He was tried for murder of the clone. I hadn't seen the connection between the two stories until now, though.