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Kaj_Sotala comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong
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Eliezer has been accused of delusions of grandeur for his belief in his own importance. But if Eliezer is guilty of such delusions then so am I and, I suspect, are many of you.
Consider two beliefs:
The next millennium will be the most critical in mankind’s existence because in most of the Everett branches arising out of today mankind will go extinct or start spreading through the stars.
Eliezer’s work on friendly AI makes him the most significant determinant of our fate in (1).
Let 10^N represent the average across our future Everett branches of the total number of sentient beings whose ancestors arose on earth. If Eliezer holds beliefs (1) and (2) then he considers himself the most important of these beings and the probability of this happening by chance is 1 in 10^N. But if (1) holds then the rest of us are extremely important as well through how our voting, buying, contributing, writing… influences mankind’s fate. Let say that makes most of us one of the trillion most important beings who will ever exist. The probability of this happening by chance is 1 in 10^(N-12).
If N is at least 18 it’s hard to think of a rational criteria under which believing you are 1 in 10^N is delusional whereas thinking you are 1 in 10^(N-12) is not.
Can you provide a cite for the notion that Eliezer believes (2)? Since he's not likely to build the world's first FAI in his garage all by himself, without incorporating the work of any of other thousands of people working on FAI and FAI's necessary component technologies, I think it would be a bit delusional of him to beleive (2) as stated. Which is not to suggest that his work is not important, or even among the most significant work done in the history of humankind (even if he fails, others can build on that and find the way that works). But that's different than the idea that he, alone, is The Most Significant Human Who Will Ever Live. I don't get the impression that he's that cocky.
Eliezer has been accused on LW of having or possibly having delusions of grandeur for essentially believing in (2). See here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2lr/the_importance_of_selfdoubt/
My main point is that even if Eliezer believes in (2) we can't conclude that he has such delusions unless we also accept that many LW readers also have such delusions.