As with "effective altruism", the whole thing seems like an exercise in rationalizing destructive behavior in the present. "Sure, my actions are causing harm to hundreds of people, but that's outweighed by the good that will be realized millions of years in the future."
For me the universal antidote to this kind of thinking is this Stephen Jay Gould quote:
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Thus actions that put more people into "cotton fields and sweatshops" today instead of lifting them out of poverty are detrimental to the long-term survival of our species.
For me the universal antidote to this kind of thinking is this Stephen Jay Gould quote:
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Thus actions that put more people into "cotton fields and sweatshops" today instead of lifting them out of poverty are detrimental to the long-term survival of our species.