I feel like it’s one reasonable position to call such proposals non-starters until a possibility proof is shown, and instead work on basic theory that will eventually be able to give more plausible basic building blocks for designing an intelligent system.
I agree that deciding to work on basic theory is a pretty reasonable research direction—but that doesn’t imply that other proposals can’t possibly work. Thinking that a research direction is less likely to mitigate existential risk than another is different than thinking that a research direction is entirely a non-starter. The second requires significantly more evidence than the first and it doesn’t seem to me like the points that you referenced cross that bar, though of course that’s a subjective distinction.
I agree that deciding to work on basic theory is a pretty reasonable research direction—but that doesn’t imply that other proposals can’t possibly work. Thinking that a research direction is less likely to mitigate existential risk than another is different than thinking that a research direction is entirely a non-starter. The second requires significantly more evidence than the first and it doesn’t seem to me like the points that you referenced cross that bar, though of course that’s a subjective distinction.