Definitely an interesting comment. Thanks.

I don't think I find your psychological argument very relevant here. The conspiracy allows - indeed, it makes a cardinal assumption - that Eliezer loves doing what he does, i.e. discussing and spreading ideas about rationality and theorising about AI and futurology; the only proposed dissonance between his statements and his findings would be that he is (whether intentionally or not, see below) overblowing the danger of a near-omnipotent unfriendly AI. And of course, people can be untruthful in one field and still be highly altruist in a hundred others.

Speaking of which, we ended up drifting further from the idea XiXiDu and I were originally entertaining, which was that of a cunning plot to create his dream job. While, only because of his passion for rationality, it would still be interesting if Eliezer were suffering from such a dramatic bias (and it would be downright hilarious if he were truly pulling a fast one), the more such a bias is unconscious and hard to spot, the closer it comes to being a honest mistake, rather than negligence; but it's not particularly interesting or amusing that someone could have made a honest mistake.