Applied Case: The False Vacuum
The field is now gone, and all futures it contained with it.
A false vacuum is a physically possible state in which reality appears stable but is not actually in its lowest possible energy state.
(If you somehow have reason to believe such a decay event is currently underway, hurry to the last paragraph, you do not have much time.)
That is the simple definition of a false vacuum.
The less simple version belongs in a physics article I can not write. The only point needed here is the basic structure of the case: if our vacuum were only metastable, then it could theoretically decay into a lower-energy state. That decay would begin with a bubble of the new vacuum forming. That bubble would expand outward at nearly the speed of light, converting the old vacuum into the new one as it went.
Anything inside the affected region would not receive advance warning for the approaching vacuum.
There would not even be enough continuity for the familiar phrase “the end of the world” to remain properly sized. This would not be the death of a planet, a biosphere, a civilization, a species, or a galaxy. A false vacuum event would be the global replacement of the physical conditions under which those things were even possible.
This essentially rewrites the laws of physics, immediately, everywhere. The field itself would simply end and be replaced.
Bad Ethics.
Most moral frameworks are not built to work with this case. They can eventually say something, but usually only after a few rounds of the translation game.
A suffering-based framework has to ask who suffers. But in the clean version of this case, there may be no suffering. There is simply no time in a false vacuum for any fear, pain, grief, deprivation, or experience of loss, at all. The transition between states happens too quickly for the familiar drama of suffering to unfold.
A rights-based framework has to ask whose rights are violated here. But there's no violator, no institution, no law, no agent, no coercion, no theft, no assault, no imprisonment, and no betrayal. There is a transition in the physical field. Good luck.
A duty-based framework has to ask who failed their duty. But no one may have failed anything at all. The event most likely had no responsible selector. If it occurs naturally, there is no one to accuse.
A virtue framework has to ask what kind of character is displayed. This is now a farce. The false vacuum does not display character. It simply is not cowardly, cruel, reckless, greedy, or unjust. It is a false vacuum. It does not, in fact, need our moral education. It is never going to become a better vacuum after reading Aristotle.
A contractualist framework has to ask what principles no one could reasonably reject. Only this event is not proposed to anyone. There is no contract, no deliberation, no bargaining position, no social relation at all. Again, have fun.
A person-affecting view has the hardest time. I feel pretty bad for anyone operating solely under a person-affecting view, because it seems like adding a lot of unnecessary work. It wants harm to be bad for someone in particular. Except, unfortunately for them, this transition removes all future persons, and possibly all future conditions under which any persons could ever exist again, instantly, and then the very structure that would supply the “someone” has also now been erased.
This irreverent portrayal does not mean those frameworks have nothing to say here.
The best consequentialist and longtermist approaches can get closest. They can point to the loss of all future value, all future lives, all future experience, all future flourishing, all future achievement, all future discovery, and all future repair. They can say that the expected loss is as large as any loss could be by any measure.
Unfortunately, they are still reaching this conclusion by counting their favorite imagined downstream goods that will no longer occur.
The Modal Path Ethics Field Analysis.
The false vacuum transition is maximal harm because it closes all reachable future-space from the affected field. Every future life, every future repair, every future discovery, every future relation, every future good, every future Better, every later moral question, and every locus that might have come to exist through the old field is closed at once. The field is now gone, with all futures it contained within it.
This is the most harm possible in our extance, and to be avoided.