You don't know that he does. You only know that he says he does. Also, MIRI needs your donations!
In all seriousness, it appears that he simply has a much larger circle of empathy than you do. Yours only includes yourself, children, family and friends, which sounds like (what Peter Singer has convincingly argued to be) the default setting that evolution presumably gave you a sense of empathy for because that'd promote the survival of your genes. But that circle can expand, and in fact it has tended to expand over the last couple of millenia. In Eliezer's case, it appears to include at least all humans. And why? Well, my suspicion is that people have a distaste for contradictions, and any arbitrary limit to empathy is inherently fraught with contradictions. ("Is it okay for a policeman to not care about you because you're not his friend?" "How many non-friends would you kill to save the life of a friend?" etc.) And maybe maybe Eliezer simply has a greater sensitivity to, and distaste for, contradictions than you do.
This is something to think about, thanks.
What about the seeming preference for existence over non-existence? How do you morally justify keeping people around when there is so much suffering? In the specs versus torture, why not simply erase everyone?
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.