Think Globally, Act Unilaterally

While trawling through old emails the other day I came across this from an email to Androoo in mid 2003:

I thought of another interesting facet of the problem of infinities in the moral calculus: the main argument for unilateral disarmament pre-1990 is now an equally good argument for unilateral world conquest.

Numerous commentators on the cold war have written that the game theory that usually applies to relations between countries should be thrown out when the risk of human extinction has to be factored in; while human extinction may have a low probability, but is of infinite badness, so all other goods should logically be sacrificed to avoid it. Thus, violations of international law, violations of human rights, and considerations of national interest should all be ignored in favour of unilateral disarmament...

Now, if there is no current threat of human extinction, but one might arise in the future, all other goods should logically be sacrificed to avoid it. Thus, violations of international law, violations of human rights, and considerations of national interest should all be ignored in favour of unilateral world conquest...

Of course these are both simplistic arguments, but I reckon they map onto each other perfectly! The only difference is the artifactual distinction between "doing bad things so that good things will happen" and "letting bad things happen so that good things will happen" which disappears if you can eradicate solipsism completely and really believe sum homo...

I wonder how much the Venn diagram of the adherents of these two opinions overlaps? (probably <0.0001 %)