I mean, from the inside it would look like what you said, good ideas that are persuasive. And I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas that are persuasive (I agree they are). I’m more just pointing out some examples of ideas that form core elements of our belief ecosystem, that have their source in the works of particular elites, in this case, being named and popularized by Bostrom’s book Superintelligence, and then further popularized by Yudkowsky in the Sequences. In the sense that this is elitism, it’s very mild, and I don’t mean to imply it’s a problem or anything. It’s natural for the more elite among us to be in a better position to come up with the good ideas. I think also that to the extent there is deference here, it is usually well deserved, and also very tame compared to other intellectual communities.
I mean, from the inside it would look like what you said, good ideas that are persuasive. And I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas that are persuasive (I agree they are). I’m more just pointing out some examples of ideas that form core elements of our belief ecosystem, that have their source in the works of particular elites, in this case, being named and popularized by Bostrom’s book Superintelligence, and then further popularized by Yudkowsky in the Sequences. In the sense that this is elitism, it’s very mild, and I don’t mean to imply it’s a problem or anything. It’s natural for the more elite among us to be in a better position to come up with the good ideas. I think also that to the extent there is deference here, it is usually well deserved, and also very tame compared to other intellectual communities.