A number of people have mentioned the seemingly-unimpeachable reputation of the Future of Humanity Institute without mentioning that its director, Nick Bostrom, fairly obviously has a high opinion of Eliezer (e.g., he invited him to contribute not one but twochapters to the volume on Global Catastrophic Risks). Heuristically, if I have a high opinion of Bostrom and the FHI project, that raises my opinion of Eliezer and decreases the probability of Eliezer-as-crackpot.
A number of people have mentioned the seemingly-unimpeachable reputation of the Future of Humanity Institute without mentioning that its director, Nick Bostrom, fairly obviously has a high opinion of Eliezer (e.g., he invited him to contribute not one but two chapters to the volume on Global Catastrophic Risks). Heuristically, if I have a high opinion of Bostrom and the FHI project, that raises my opinion of Eliezer and decreases the probability of Eliezer-as-crackpot.