Let's try a variant...
Consider two planets, both completely devoid of anything resembling life or intelligence. Anyone who looks at either one of them sees an unremarkable hunk of rock of no particular value. In one of them, the center consists of more unremarkable rock. In the other, however, hidden beneath the surface is a cache that consists of replicas of every museum and library that currently exists on Earth, but which will never be found or seen by anyone (because nobody is going to bother to look that hard at an unremarkable hunk of rock). Does the existence of the second hunk of rock have more value than the first?
Try this one: pick something, anything you want. How much would you value if it existed outside the universe? Use an expanding universe to throw it irrevocably outside your future light cone if “existing outside the universe" is making your brain cringe. Or use a cycling crunch/bang universe, and suppose it existed before the last crunch.
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.