Thanks for writing this. It seems EY is now less fashionable, so criticizing him as a crackpot is more acceptable. But I remember a few years ago when he was i

Thanks for writing this. It seems EY is now less fashionable, so criticizing him as a crackpot is more acceptable. But I remember a few years ago when he was in full swing, he had a lot of traction even here on HN, and of course in many nerdy circles. Also see that debacle with Roko's Basilisk and all those silly antics. The LessWrong crowd is insufferable. I can sort of understand why EY had so much pull with internet nerds. He talked the talk, he was confident, and he was a nerd. But I'm also relieved that more people seem to understand now that he is a crackpot, and that claiming one is an expert on AI doesn't make it so, and that writing long essays mixing Bayes, Harry Potter and "rationalism" doesn't really make anyone an expert on anything.