I don’t really mean “smart” in the sense that a chess player proves their intelligence by being good at chess, or a mathematician proves their intelligence by being good at math. I mean smart in the sense of good at forming true beliefs and acting on them. If Nick Bostrom were to profess his belief that the world was created 6000 years ago, then I would say this constitutes reasonably strong evidence that the world was created 6000 years ago (when combined with existing evidence that Nick Bostrom is good at forming correct beliefs and reporting them honestly). Of course, there is much stronger evidence against this hypothesis (and it is extremely unlikely that I would have only Bostrom’s testimony—if he came to such a belief legitimately I would strongly expect there to be additional evidence he could present), so if he were to come out and say such a thing it would mostly just decrease my estimate of his intelligence rather than decreasing my estimate for the age of the Earth. The situation with SIAI is very different: I know of little convincing evidence bearing one way or the other on the question, and there are good reasons that intelligent people might not be able to produce easily understood evidence justifying their positions (since that evidence basically consists of a long thought process which they claim to have worked through over years).
Finally, though you didn’t object, I shouldn’t really have said “obvious.” There are definitely other plausible explanations for the observed behavior of SIAI supporters than their honest belief that it is the most important cause to support.
There are several problems with what I said.
My use of “extremely” was unequivocally wrong.
I don’t really mean “smart” in the sense that a chess player proves their intelligence by being good at chess, or a mathematician proves their intelligence by being good at math. I mean smart in the sense of good at forming true beliefs and acting on them. If Nick Bostrom were to profess his belief that the world was created 6000 years ago, then I would say this constitutes reasonably strong evidence that the world was created 6000 years ago (when combined with existing evidence that Nick Bostrom is good at forming correct beliefs and reporting them honestly). Of course, there is much stronger evidence against this hypothesis (and it is extremely unlikely that I would have only Bostrom’s testimony—if he came to such a belief legitimately I would strongly expect there to be additional evidence he could present), so if he were to come out and say such a thing it would mostly just decrease my estimate of his intelligence rather than decreasing my estimate for the age of the Earth. The situation with SIAI is very different: I know of little convincing evidence bearing one way or the other on the question, and there are good reasons that intelligent people might not be able to produce easily understood evidence justifying their positions (since that evidence basically consists of a long thought process which they claim to have worked through over years).
Finally, though you didn’t object, I shouldn’t really have said “obvious.” There are definitely other plausible explanations for the observed behavior of SIAI supporters than their honest belief that it is the most important cause to support.