It would be immensely sad if humankind went extinct. But what exactly should we be sad about? Is it just our deaths that would be tragic? Or would the loss of all future human civilization — beyond the immediate loss of life — be what we should mourn?

That’s the question explored in a new paper by Stefan Schubert, Lucius Caviola, and Nadira Faber at the University of Oxford. They surveyed thousands of people about how they think about human extinction.

Here’s one of the questions they asked of thousands of people in the US and UK:

Compare three…