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Mitchell_Porter comments on That other kind of status - Less Wrong
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Eliezer has said that "it seems pretty obvious to me that some point in the not-too-distant future we're going to build an AI [...] it will be a superintelligence relative to us [...] in one to ten decades and probably on the lower side of that." ---- http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/21857
The vast majority of very smart and accomplished people (e.g. Nobel prize winners in sciences, Fields medalists, founders of large tech corporations) do not subscribe to the view that the "singularity is near." This raises a strong possibility that people like Eliezer who think that it's pretty obvious that "the singularity is near" are deluded for the same reason that the 9-11 Truthers are. As Yvain says, it's a boost to one's self esteem to feel that one has "figured out a deep and important secret that the rest of the world is too complacent to realize."
Has there been any discussion of this matter in the Less Wrong archives?
Variations on this theme have certainly come up. This site says it's about rationality, yet the local consensus is weird or deviant, what if that's being produced by the very same irrationality mechanisms that you all write about? Lots of people have posed that question.
With respect to your comparison: The idea that this will be the century of artificial intelligence is commonplace now. Silicon Valley has not quite become Singularity Valley, but it is extremely common for people who work in the computer industry, even very senior ones, to now anticipate a future that is radically science-fictional in character. It would only be a small number of your "very smart and accomplished people" who even have a considered opinion, pro or con, on Eliezer's specific philosophy, but I don't think his statement that you quote is especially unusual or anomalous for its time.
You could say something similar about the 9-11 Truthers too - that they are part of the zeitgeist - though in locating their social support base, you'll find it's identifiably different to the culture in which singularity ideas are most potent. The generalization is far from universal, but I would say that singularity believers tend to be people from technical or scientific subcultures who feel personally empowered by the rise of technology, whereas 9-11 conspiracy believers are politically and socially minded and feel disempowered by the state of the world.