ikrase comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong
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Oh, okay. Personally I lean much more towards average utilitarianism as opposed to total, but I haven't really thought through the issue that much. I was unaware that total utilitarianism was popular enough that it alone was sufficient for so many people to endorse space colonization.
But, now that I think about it, even if you wanted to add as many happy people to the universe as possible, couldn't you do it more efficiently with ems?
Personally, I too tend toward 'utilitarianism's domain does not include number of people', but I think most people have a preference toward at least minor pop. growth.
Also, many people (including me) are skeptical about ems or emulation in general. Plus, you'd want to colonize universe to build more emulation hardware?