Hey! Can’t respond most of your points now unfortunately, but just a few quick things :)
(I’m working on a followup piece at the moment and will try to respond to some of your criticisms there)
My central point is the ‘inconsequential in the grand scheme of things’ one you highlight here. This is why I end the essay with this quote:
> If among our aims and ends there is anything conceived in terms of human happiness and misery, then we are bound to judge our actions in terms not only of possible contributions to the happiness of man in a distant future, but also of their more immediate effects. We must not argue that the misery of one generation may be considered as a mere means to the end of securing the lasting happiness of some later generation or generations; and this argument is improved neither by a high degree of promised happiness nor by a large number of generations profiting by it. All generations are transient. All have an equal right to be considered, but our immediate duties are undoubtedly to the present generation and to the next. Besides, we should never attempt to balance anybody’s misery against somebody else’s happiness.
The “undefined” bit also “proves too much”; it basically says we can’t predict anything ever, but actually empirical evidence and common sense both strongly indicate that we can make many predictions with better-than-chance accuracy
Just wanted to flag that I responded to the ‘proving too much’ concern here: Proving Too Much
It does and we should. I wrote a post about this you might find useful: https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2021/the_credence_assumption/