Longtermism

Longtermism is a quasi-religious worldview, influenced by transhumanism and utilitarian ethics, which asserts that there could be so many digital people living in vast computer simulations millions or billions of years in the future that one of our most important moral obligations today is to take actions that ensure as many of these digital people come into existence as possible.

According to Nick Bostrom —the Father of longtermism and director of the Future of Humanity Institute — there could be at least "10 to the power 58" digital people in the future, or a 1 followed by 58 zeros. Others have put forward similar estimates, although as Bostrom wrote in 2003 "what matters … is not the exact numbers but the fact that they are huge".