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DanielLC comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong
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If you're an average utilitarian, it's still a good idea if you can make the colonists happier than average. Since it's likely that there is large amounts of wildlife throughout the universe, this shouldn't be that difficult.
???
What's the question?
Earth isn't the only planet with life, is it? If most planets do not evolve sapient life, then the planets will be full of wildlife, which doesn't live very good lives.
That assumes that on most planets life will evolve to have wildlife but not sapient life, as opposed to e.g. only evolving single-celled life. Basically you're assuming that the most likely hard step for intelligence is between "wildlife" and "sapient life" instead of coming earlier, which seems unjustified without supporting evidence, since there are earlier candidates for hard steps that come after life has already began on the world. For example, from Hanson's paper:
It assumes a hard step between wildlife and sapient life, but it makes no assumptions about earlier hard steps.
I suppose it's not likely to be a hard enough step that creating enough life to massively outweigh it is all that hard. Wildlife will only live on the surface of one planet. Sapient life can live on many planets, and can mine them as so to use all the matter.