Uh, it wasn't given as an "argument" in the first place. Evidence which does more strongly relate to p(DOOM) includes the extent to which we look back and see the ashes of previous failed technological civilisations, and past major mishaps. I go into all this in my DOOM video.

...looks like it bears very little resemblance to anything I have ever said. I don't know where you are getting it from.

Looking back I think I read more into your comments than was really there; I apologize.

Such agents should normally be concerned with having more babies than their neighbours do - and should not indulge in much paranoia about THE END OF THE WORLD. That is not sticking with poor quality cognition, it is often the correct thing to do for an agent with those aims.

I agree here. The debate is over whether or not the current situation is normal.

However, often THE END OF THE WORLD can be rationally perceived to be someone else's problem.

Tentatively agreed. Normally, even if nanotech's gonna kill everyone, you're not able to do much about it anyway. But I'm not sure why you bring up "Expending resources fighting DOOM usually just means you get gradually squeezed out of the gene pool." when most people aren't at all trying to optimize the amount of copies of their genes in the gene pool.

The DOOM enthusiasts typically base their arguments on utilitarianism. A biologist's perspective on that is that it is sometimes an attempt to signal unselfishness - albeit usually a rather unbelievable one - and sometimes an attempt to manipulate others into parting withe their cash.

Generally this is true, especially before science was around to make such meme pushing low status. But it's also very true of global warming paranoia, which is high status even among intellectuals for some reason. (I should probably try to figure out why.) I readily admit that certain values of outside view will jump from that to 'and so all possible DOOM-pushing groups are just trying to signal altruism or swindle people' -- but rationality should help you win, and a sufficiently good rationalist should trust themselves to try and beat the outside view here.

So maybe instead of saying 'poor epistemology' I should say 'odd emphasis on outside view when generally people trust their epistemology better than that beyond a certain point of perceived rationality in themselves'.

I have been consistently capitalising DOOM - and a few related terms - for quite a while. I believe these terms deserve special treatment - in accordance with how important everybody says they are - and all-caps is the most portable form of emphasis across multiple sites and environments.

May I suggest as a matter of style that "Doom" more accurately represents your intended meaning of specific treatment and usage as a noun that isn't just a description? Since ALL CAPS has the interpretation of mere shouting you fail to communicate your meaning effectively if you use all caps instead of Title Case in this instance. Consider 'End Of The World' as a superior option.

Did you similarly give Yudkowsky a public ticking-off when he recently delved into the realm of BOLD ALL CAPS combined with ad-hominen insults? His emphasis extended to whole paragraphs - and his insults were considerably more personal - as I recall. Or am I getting special treatment?

Let's be honest. If we're going to consider that incident as an admissible tu quoque to any Yudkowskian then we could justify just about any instance of obnoxious social behaviour thereby. I didn't object to your comments here simply because I didn't consider them out of line on their own merits. I would have no qualms about criticising actual bad behaviour just because Eliezer acted like a douche.

Mind you I am not CarlShuman and the relevance of hypocrisy to Carl's attempt of a status slap is far greater than if it was an attempt by me. Even so you could replace "Or am I getting special treatment?" with "Or are you giving me special treatment?" and so reduce the extent that you signal that it is ok to alienate or marginalise you.

You ignored the word 'repetitive.' As you say, you have a continuing policy of carelessness towards causing offense, i.e. rudeness. And no, I don't think that the comment you mention was appropriate either (versus off-LW communication), but given that it was deleted I didn't see reason to make a further post about it elsewhere. Here are some recent comment threads in which I called out Eliezer and others for ad hominem attacks.

There really is an analogy between the SIAI and various THE END OF THE WORLD cults - as I previously spelled out here.

Also, FOOM rhymes with DOOM. There!

Everyone knows the analogy exists. It's just a matter of looking at the details to see if that has any bearing on whether or not SIAI is a useful organization or not.