Taleb quote doesn’t qualify. (I won’t comment on others.)
I should have made more clearly that it is not my intention to indicate that I believe that those people, or crazy ideas in general, are wrong. But there are a lot of smart people out there who’ll advocate opposing ideas. Using their reputation of being highly intelligent to follow through on their ideas is in my opinion not a very good idea in itself. I could just believe Freeman Dyson that existing simulation models of climate contain too much error to reliably predict future trends. I could believe Peter Duesberg that HIV does not cause aids, after all he is a brilliant molecular biologist. But I just do not think that any amount of reputation is enough evidence to believe extraordinary claims uttered by such people. And in the case of Yudkowsky, there doesn’t even exist much reputation and no great achievements at all that would justify some strong belief in his infallibility. What there exists in Yudkowsky’s case seems to be strong emotional commitment. I just can’t tell if he is honest. If he really believes that he’s working on a policy for some future superhuman intelligence that will rule the universe, then I’m going to be very careful. Not because it is wrong, but because such beliefs imply huge payoffs. Not that I believe he is the disguised Dr. Evil, but can we be sure enough to just trust him with it? Censorship of certain ideas does bear more evidence against him as it does in favor of his honesty.
I should have made more clearly that it is not my intention to indicate that I believe that those people, or crazy ideas in general, are wrong. But there are a lot of smart people out there who’ll advocate opposing ideas. Using their reputation of being highly intelligent to follow through on their ideas is in my opinion not a very good idea in itself. I could just believe Freeman Dyson that existing simulation models of climate contain too much error to reliably predict future trends. I could believe Peter Duesberg that HIV does not cause aids, after all he is a brilliant molecular biologist. But I just do not think that any amount of reputation is enough evidence to believe extraordinary claims uttered by such people. And in the case of Yudkowsky, there doesn’t even exist much reputation and no great achievements at all that would justify some strong belief in his infallibility. What there exists in Yudkowsky’s case seems to be strong emotional commitment. I just can’t tell if he is honest. If he really believes that he’s working on a policy for some future superhuman intelligence that will rule the universe, then I’m going to be very careful. Not because it is wrong, but because such beliefs imply huge payoffs. Not that I believe he is the disguised Dr. Evil, but can we be sure enough to just trust him with it? Censorship of certain ideas does bear more evidence against him as it does in favor of his honesty.