The quotes have been relevant as they showed that Yudkowsky clearly believes in his intellectual and epistemic superiority, yet any corroborative evidence seems to be missing. Yes, there is this huge amount of writings on rationality and some miscellaneous musing on artificial intelligence. [...]

Yudkowsky is definitely a clever fellow. He may not have fancy qualifications - and he is far from infallible - but he is pretty smart.

In the particular post in question, I am pretty sure he was being silly - which is a rather unfortunate time to be claiming superiority.

However, I don't really know. The stunt created intrigue, mystery, the forbidden, added to the controversy. Overall, Yudkowsky is pretty good at marketing - and maybe this was a taste of it.

I wonder if his Harry Potter fan-fic is marketing - or else how he justifies it.