Yes, I agree, as do the quotes and Agar even: because this is not Pascal’s wager where the infinites render the probabilities irrelevant, we ultimately need to fill in specific probabilities before we can decide that destructive uploading is a bad idea, and this is where Agar goes terribly wrong—he presents poor arguments that the probabilities will be low enough to make it an obviously bad idea. But I don’t think this point is relevant to this conversation thread.
Indeed, the line in the quote:
Could apply equally well to crossing a street. There is very, very little we can do without some “ineliminable risk” being attached to it.
We have to balance the risks and expected benefits for our actions; which requires knowledge not philosophical “might-be”s.
Yes, I agree, as do the quotes and Agar even: because this is not Pascal’s wager where the infinites render the probabilities irrelevant, we ultimately need to fill in specific probabilities before we can decide that destructive uploading is a bad idea, and this is where Agar goes terribly wrong—he presents poor arguments that the probabilities will be low enough to make it an obviously bad idea. But I don’t think this point is relevant to this conversation thread.
It occurred to me when I was reading the original post, but I was inspired to post it here mostly as a me-too to your line:
That is, reinforcing that everything has some “ineradicable risk”.