Beyond Astronomical Waste — LessWrong
Faced with the astronomical amount of unclaimed and unused resources in our universe, one's first reaction is probably wonderment and anticipation, but a second reaction may be disappointment that our universe isn't even larger or contains even more resources (such as the ability to support 3^^^3 human lifetimes or perhaps to perform an infinite amount of computation). In a previous post I suggested that the potential amount of astronomical waste in our universe seems small enough that a total utilitarian (or the total utilitarianism part of someone’s moral uncertainty) might reason that since one should have made a deal to trade away power/resources/influence in this universe for power/resources/influence in universes with much larger amounts of available resources, it would be rational to behave as if this deal was actually made. But for various reasons a total utilitarian may not buy that argument, in which case another line of thought is to look for things to care about beyond the