[Micaiah_Chang]

You seem to be implying that intentional slowing is MIRI's official stance, without any showing support. Given that the original response was in response to the specific accusation of "no AI experts say that this is a problem", I think you are reading too much into this. I agree that it is slightly disingenuous for lukeprog to have posted that list, but I feel your disagreement is far too uncharitable and motivated to be productive.

Disclaimer: I have read a bunch of the LessWrong "canon" and believe many of their points, sans perhaps the timescale on which recursive self improvement can happen. I think most of my acceptance comes from the relatively poor quality of their critics, who seem to attribute many strawmanish positions to them or who seem more concerned with namecalling-via-cult.

I cannot help but think that if a better criticism exists, why hasn't anyone said it yet?

[AndrewKemendo]

I cannot help but think that if a better criticism exists, why hasn't anyone said it yet?

The whole lesswrong/MIRI thing is built around the strawman of unfriendly AI, as though it were already real. What you are asking is, why aren't there better arguments against strawmen and radical pontification?

It's like if I said, "There is a chance that mean aliens will come soon, therefore we need to start building defense systems." Ok, show me any proof that there are aliens coming or even an avenue for aliens to come here and be unfriendly.

Sure, it's a possibility that there are mean aliens who are going to attack us, but there is absolutely nothing to think that is a thing that is going to happen soon.

Granted, this is not a perfect analogy but I think it makes my point well. I am uncharitable because it's charlatanism and seems to be gaining traction - in the same vein as antivaxxers.

[Micaiah_Chang]

Even antivaxxers have people more patient and more understanding of their opponents actually debunking their object level thinking. They say that vaccines cause autism? We say that the original study was wrong! Why do you get to be even less charitable than "pro"-vaxxers?

Consider that the general position seems to be "we don't know when SMI would happen, but if we use the metric that our critics say is more reliable than ours we see that a survey of many AI experts we can find seem to say that human level AI is possible in about 30-50 years at 50% probability." (numbers are quoted from memory and most likely incorrect)

Yet here you are saying that MIRI/LW claims "it's a thing that's going to happen soon", that there is "absolutely nothing to think that is a thing". I can't help but think most of the "charlatanism" you see is manufactured in your own head and not a product of reading and understanding your opponent's position.

Yes, this is an unabashed ad hominem, but I wish people would attack arguments that exist rather than arguments that are easy to knock down. It's upsetting to me that, when I say that your arguments are lacking, your response is "So what? The Enemy is Evil and Stupid and I do not need to understand them."

[DennisP]

I think you're building a bit of a strawman here yourself. MIRI's main argument is pretty simple: building a beneficial AGI is a difficult problem with more constraints than just building an AGI, so we should start working on that problem now, rather than waiting until AGI is almost here.