My guess is that it’s just an effect of field growth. A lot of people coming in now weren’t around when the consensus formed and don’t agree with it or don’t even know much about it.
Also, the consensus wasn’t exactly uncontroversial on LW even way back in the day. Hanson’s Ems inhabit a somewhat more recognisable world and economy that doesn’t have superintelligence in it, and lots of skeptics used to be skeptical in the sense of thinking all of this AI stuff was way too speculative and wouldn’t happen for hundreds of years if ever, so they made critiques of that form or just didn’t engage in AI discussions at all. LW wasn’t anywhere near this AI-centric when I started reading it around 2010.
My guess is that it’s just an effect of field growth. A lot of people coming in now weren’t around when the consensus formed and don’t agree with it or don’t even know much about it.
Also, the consensus wasn’t exactly uncontroversial on LW even way back in the day. Hanson’s Ems inhabit a somewhat more recognisable world and economy that doesn’t have superintelligence in it, and lots of skeptics used to be skeptical in the sense of thinking all of this AI stuff was way too speculative and wouldn’t happen for hundreds of years if ever, so they made critiques of that form or just didn’t engage in AI discussions at all. LW wasn’t anywhere near this AI-centric when I started reading it around 2010.