[ExI] on inflation in long term thinking

[Samantha Atkins]

I was recently rereading Eliezer's Cognitive Biases paper.  It ends  
with a paragraph that I find troublesome.

" No more than Albert Szent-Györgyi could multiply the suffering of  
one human by a
hundred million can I truly understand the value of clear thinking  
about global risks.
Scope neglect is the hazard of being a biological human, running on an  
analog brain; the
brain cannot multiply by six billion.  And the stakes of existential  
risk extend beyond even
the six billion humans alive today, to all the stars in all the  
galaxies that humanity and
humanity's descendants may some day touch.  All that vast potential  
hinges on our survival
here, now, in the days when the realm of humankind is a single planet  
orbiting a single
star.  I can't feel our future.  All I can do is try to defend it."

What bothers me is the implicit notion rational decision making  
requires maximal extension of hypotheticals.   None of us have any  
real idea whether humanity or its descendants have a future beyond  
this planet, solar system or local galactic neighborhood.  That we  
might perhaps become or create near-gods that touch the entire galaxy  
eventually can surely be said of every reasonably sapient species in  
the universe.   But is it really rational to judge risk to humanity as  
equating to a major risk to the entire universe?   I don't see how  
this is justified.   Do we judge a human being not just on his own  
character and likely potential but on the potential of all those  
myriad of beings he might possibly be an ancestor to plus all those  
artificial beings that he might create or have some small part in  
creating and all their works as well?  Surely this throws reasonable  
context, likelihood analysis and any basis for rational decision  
making into disarray.

So what is the proper means of cleaning this up?  How is it properly  
delimited to something actually useful?  Am I missing something?

- samantha

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