Besides which, by bothering to try to come up with a wholly naturalistic worldview that never resorts to mysticism in the first place, Eliezer is massively ahead of the overwhelming majority of, for example, laypeople and philosophers.
That means that if I just say “space aliens have replaced the President”, I’m saying something bad, but if I copy a math textbook, and add a footnote “also, space aliens have replaced the President”, I’m saying something good, because the sum total of what I am saying (a lot of good math + one bad thing about aliens) is good. In one sense that’s correct; people could certainly learn lots of math from my footnoted math textbook. But we don’t generally add these kinds of things together.
That means that if I just say “space aliens have replaced the President”, I’m saying something bad, but if I copy a math textbook, and add a footnote “also, space aliens have replaced the President”, I’m saying something good, because the sum total of what I am saying (a lot of good math + one bad thing about aliens) is good. In one sense that’s correct; people could certainly learn lots of math from my footnoted math textbook. But we don’t generally add these kinds of things together.
Did you write the rest of the math textbook?