I don't disagree, and I don't think you're a bad person, and my intent is not to guilt or pressure you. My intent is more to show some people that certain things that may feel impossible are not impossible. :-)

A few things, though:

No one knows which of these is more likely to result in the long-term prosperity of the human race. So it is best to diversify and hope that one of these outliers does not end up killing all of us, intentionally or accidentally.

This seems like a cop out to me. Given a bunch of people trying to help the world, it would be best for all of them to do the thing that they think most helps the world. Often, this will lead to diversity (not just because people have different ideas about what is good, but also because of diminishing marginal returns and saturation). Sometimes, it won't (e.g. after a syn bio proof of concept that kills 1/4 of the race I would hope that diversity in problem-selection would decrease). "It is best to diversify and hope" seems like a platitude that dodges the fun parts.

I do not "care about every single individual on this planet". I care about myself, my family, friends and some other people I know.

I also have this feeling, in a sense. I interpret it very differently, and I am aware of the typical mind fallacy, but I also caution against the "you must be Fundamentally Different" fallacy. Part of the theme behind this post is "you can interpret the internal caring feelings differently if you want", and while I interpret my care-senses differently, I do empathize with this sentiment.

That's not to say that you should come around to my viewpoint, by any means. But if you (or others) would like to try, for one reason or another, consider the following points:

1. Do you care only about the people who are currently close friends, or also the people who could be close friends? Is the value a property of the person, or a property of the fact that that person has been brought to your awareness?
2. Would you care more about humans in a context where humanity is treated as the 'in-group'? For example, consider a situation where an alien race is at war with humans, and a roving band of alien brutes have captured a human family and are torturing them for fun. Does this boil your blood? Or do you not really care?
3. I assume that you wouldn't push a friend in front of the trolley to save ten strangers. However, if you and a friend were in a room with ten strangers behind a veil of uncertainty, and were informed that the twelve of you were about to play in a trolley game, would you sign a contract which stated that (assuming unanimous agreement) the pusher agrees to push the pushee?

In my case, much of my decision to care about the rest of the world is due to an adjustment upwards of the importance of other people (after noticing that I tend to care significantly about people after I have gotten to know them very well, and deciding that people don't matter less just because I'm not yet close to them). There's also a significant portion of my caring that comes from caring about others because I would want others to care about me if the positions were reversed, and this seeming like the right action in a timeless sense.

Finally, much of my caring comes from treating all of humanity as my in-group (everyone is a close friend, I just don't know most of them yet; see also the expanding circle).

I mess with my brother sometimes, but anyone else who tries to mess with my brother has to go through me first. Similarly there is some sense in which I don't "care" about most of the nameless masses who are out of my sight (in that I don't have feelings for them), but there's a fashion in which I do care about them, in that anyone who fucks with humans fucks with me.

Disease, war, and death are all messing with my people, and while I may not be strong enough to do anything about it today, there will come a time.