This is your regularly scheduled reminder that Eliezer #Yudkowsky is a complete fraud. He has no qualifications of any kind, in any field. Nor has he contributed any substantial research, in any field. His only credentials are membership in a "research institute" he founded himself, and starting a #cult. None of his opinions are worth a moment of your time.
If you know, you know. If you don't, you're probably better off. Carry on.
@b3n I'd be a lot more willing to accept that framing if he didn't present himself as an AI researcher, and pull stunts like challenging actual researchers to debates. He bears much the same relationship to computer science as Kent Hovind does to evolutionary biology. Unlike Hovind and other prominent creationists, though, Yudkowski very often manages to fool people with a genuine interest in the field into taking him seriously.
@medigoth Eliezer Yudkowsky has convinced me of a conclusion I found hard to believe and was reluctant to accept.
It is indeed possible to read too much science fiction.
@jhertzli Ha! Like you, I'm reluctant to accept that conclusion, but, well ... [ianmalcolm]there it is[/ianmalcolm].
@medigoth I think a more interesting framing is that he has a very different profession than the ones we are used to. He is not more of a “fraud” than other authors outside academia. And compares to many he never tried to establish himself with wrong titles.
(I’m not a big fan of him, but I think the whole story is less about him and more about the society in which his ideas resonate as much.)