Comment by deontologizt

This is a great reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. However, I find it very worrying that the so-called "effective altruism" movement takes this kind of thing seriously. Look up the EA-affiliated "Foundational Research Institute" -- it's an entire pseudo think tank whose philosophy is based on negative utilitarianism, the idea that all that matters is minimizing suffering, and we should do so by any means necessary (not excluding the extinction of all life). There are other organizations that support habitat destruction on utilitarian grounds, such as "Sentience Politics" and "Animal Ethics", but FRI is the brains of the operation, so to speak. (Animal Ethics is the propaganda wing, and Sentience Politics is trying to make it policy.) Brian Tomasik, who is cited in the OP, is the founder of FRI and has written a lot about "wild animal suffering" on his blog. His conclusions are very counter-intuitive; for example, he thinks forest fires are good because they reduce the number of suffering animals in existence. That said, his articles on the possibility of sentience in reinforcement learning algorithms are pretty interesting!