<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I was recently rereading Eliezer's Cognitive Biases paper. It ends with a paragraph that I find troublesome.
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">No more than Albert Szent-Györgyi could multiply the suffering of one human by a </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">hundred million can I truly understand the value of clear thinking about global risks. </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">Scope neglect is the hazard of being a biological human, running on an analog brain; the </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">brain cannot multiply by six billion. And the stakes of existential risk extend beyond even </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">the six billion humans alive today, to all the stars in all the galaxies that humanity and </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">humanity's descendants may some day touch. All that vast potential hinges on our survival </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">here, now, in the days when the realm of humankind is a single planet orbiting a single </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">star. I can't feel our future. All I can do is try to defend it."</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">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. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">So what is the proper means of cleaning this up? How is it properly delimited to something actually useful? Am I missing something?</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">- samantha</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div>
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