I agree with many of the comments here that this is overall a bit unfair, and there are good reasons to take Yudkowsky seriously even if you don’t automatically accept his self-expressed level of confidence.
My main criticism of Yudkowsky is that he has many innovative/somewhat compelling ideas, but even with many years and a research institution their evolution has been unsatisfying. Many of them are still imprecise, and some of those that are precise(ish) are not satisfactory (e.g the orthogonality thesis, mesa-optimizers). Furthermore, he still doesn’t seem very interested in improving this situation.
I agree with many of the comments here that this is overall a bit unfair, and there are good reasons to take Yudkowsky seriously even if you don’t automatically accept his self-expressed level of confidence.
My main criticism of Yudkowsky is that he has many innovative/somewhat compelling ideas, but even with many years and a research institution their evolution has been unsatisfying. Many of them are still imprecise, and some of those that are precise(ish) are not satisfactory (e.g the orthogonality thesis, mesa-optimizers). Furthermore, he still doesn’t seem very interested in improving this situation.