To answer your question very directly on the confidence of millions of years in the future, the answer I think is “no”, because I don’t think we can be reasonably confident and precise about any significant belief about the state of the universe millions of years into the future.[1] I’d note that the article you link isn’t very convincing for someone who doesn’t share the same premesis, though I can see it leading to ‘nagging thoughts’ as you put it.
Other ways to answer the latter question about human extinction could be:
That humanity is positive (if human moral value is taken be larger than the effect on animals)
That humanity is net-positive (if the total effect of humanity is positive, most likely because of belief that wild-animal suffering is even worse)
Option value, or the belief that humanity has the capacity to change (as others have stated)
In practice though, I think if you reach a point where you might consider it to be a moral course of action to make all of humanity extinct, perhaps consider this a modus tonensof the principles that brought you to that conclusion rather than as a logical consequence that you ought to believe and act on. (I see David made a similar comment basically at the same time)
Some exceptions for phyisics especially outside of our lightcone yada yada, but I think for the class of beliefs (I used significant beliefs) that are similar to this question this holds
To answer your question very directly on the confidence of millions of years in the future, the answer I think is “no”, because I don’t think we can be reasonably confident and precise about any significant belief about the state of the universe millions of years into the future.[1] I’d note that the article you link isn’t very convincing for someone who doesn’t share the same premesis, though I can see it leading to ‘nagging thoughts’ as you put it.
Other ways to answer the latter question about human extinction could be:
That humanity is positive (if human moral value is taken be larger than the effect on animals)
That humanity is net-positive (if the total effect of humanity is positive, most likely because of belief that wild-animal suffering is even worse)
Option value, or the belief that humanity has the capacity to change (as others have stated)
In practice though, I think if you reach a point where you might consider it to be a moral course of action to make all of humanity extinct, perhaps consider this a modus tonens of the principles that brought you to that conclusion rather than as a logical consequence that you ought to believe and act on. (I see David made a similar comment basically at the same time)
Some exceptions for phyisics especially outside of our lightcone yada yada, but I think for the class of beliefs (I used significant beliefs) that are similar to this question this holds