How can you be so confident that you know so much about this topic that no world class AI expert could possibly know something relevant that you do not?
You changed what I said into a bizarre absolute. I am assuming no such thing. I am just assuming that, by default, world class experts on various topics in narrow AI, produce their beliefs about the Singularity by snap judgment rather than detailed modular analysis. This is a prior and hence an unstable probability - as soon as I see contrary evidence, as soon as I see the actual analysis, it gets revoked.
but they clearly disagree with that assessment of how much consideration your arguments deserve.
They have no such disagreement. They have no idea I exist. On the rare occasion when I encounter such a person who is physically aware of my existence, we often manage to have interesting though brief conversations despite their having read none of my stuff.
Academic authorities are not always or even usually wrong when they disagree with less authoritative contrarians
Science only works when you use it; scientific authority derives from science. If you've got Lord Kelvin running around saying that you can't have flying machines because it's ridiculous, the problem isn't that he's an Authority, the problem is that he's running on naked snap intuitive judgments of absurdity and the Wright Brothers are using actual math. The asymmetry in this case is not that pronounced but, even so, the default unstable prior is to assume that experts in narrow AI algorithms are not doing anything more complicated than this to produce their judgments about the probability of intelligence explosion - both the ones with negative affect who say "Never, you religious fear-monger!" and the ones with positive affect who say "Yes! Soon! And they shall do no wrong!" As soon as I see actual analysis, then we can talk about the actual analysis!
Added: In this field, what happens by default is that people talk complete nonsense. I spent my first years talking complete nonsense. In a situation like that, everyone has to show their work! Or at least show that they did some work! No exceptions!
Re: "They have no idea I exist."
Are you sure? You may be underestimating your own fame in this instance.
As promised, here is the "Q" part of the Less Wrong Video Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky.
The Rules
1) One question per comment (to allow voting to carry more information about people's preferences).
2) Try to be as clear and concise as possible. If your question can't be condensed to a few paragraphs, you should probably ask in a separate post. Make sure you have an actual question somewhere in there (you can bold it to make it easier to scan).
3) Eliezer hasn't been subpoenaed. He will simply ignore the questions he doesn't want to answer, even if they somehow received 3^^^3 votes.
4) If you reference certain things that are online in your question, provide a link.
5) This thread will be open to questions and votes for at least 7 days. After that, it is up to Eliezer to decide when the best time to film his answers will be. [Update: Today, November 18, marks the 7th day since this thread was posted. If you haven't already done so, now would be a good time to review the questions and vote for your favorites.]
Suggestions
Don't limit yourself to things that have been mentioned on OB/LW. I expect that this will be the majority of questions, but you shouldn't feel limited to these topics. I've always found that a wide variety of topics makes a Q&A more interesting. If you're uncertain, ask anyway and let the voting sort out the wheat from the chaff.
It's okay to attempt humor (but good luck, it's a tough crowd).
If a discussion breaks out about a question (f.ex. to ask for clarifications) and the original poster decides to modify the question, the top level comment should be updated with the modified question (make it easy to find your question, don't have the latest version buried in a long thread).
Update: Eliezer's video answers to 30 questions from this thread can be found here.