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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Cascio in The Atlantic, more on cognitive enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Less Wrong
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Comments (77)
How the heck is that a giant cheesecake fallacy?
Both are special cases of the following fallacy. A certain factor increases the strength of some possible positive effect, and also the strength of some possible negative effect, with the consequences of these effects taken in isolation being mutually exclusive. An argument is then given that since this factor increases the positive effect (negative effect), the consequences are going to be positive (negative), and therefore the factor itself is instrumentally desirable (undesirable). The argument doesn't recognize the other side of the possible consequences, ignoring the possibility that the opposite effect is going to dominate instead.
Maybe it has another existing name; the analogy seems useful.
Giant cheesecake is about the jump from capability to motive, usually in the presence of anthropomorphism or other reasons to assume the preference without thinking.
This sounds more like a generic problem of technophilia (phobia) - mostly just confirmation bias or standard filtering of arguments. It probably does need a name, though, like Appeal to Selected Possibilities or something like that.