The Prisoner's Dilemma. Classic, classic example where cooperation has a non-minimal cost - ie, the risk that they will defect against you, multiplied by the probability that they will defect, is the cost of cooperating.
VERY minimal cost (if any) of cooperating with a cooperating entity
And in the Prisoner's Dilemma, if you somehow specify the other entity is cooperating, then cooperating with a cooperating entity carries a cost still: the difference between "both cooperate" and "you defect against their cooperate" is the cost of cooperating there.
throwing cryptic opinionated darts
If your argument rested on some mathematical concepts, and one of them was an equation that you derived incorrectly, and wedrifid pointed that out, would he still be throwing darts? He wasn't telling you that you were wrong because he hates you, or because he enjoys ruining peoples' time on this blog, or any other sadistic personality trait, he was pointing out the flaw because it was flawed.
[...] SIAI's Scary Idea goes way beyond the mere statement that there are risks as well as benefits associated with advanced AGI, and that AGI is a potential existential risk.
[...] Although an intense interest in rationalism is one of the hallmarks of the SIAI community, still I have not yet seen a clear logical argument for the Scary Idea laid out anywhere. (If I'm wrong, please send me the link, and I'll revise this post accordingly. Be aware that I've already at least skimmed everything Eliezer Yudkowsky has written on related topics.)
So if one wants a clear argument for the Scary Idea, one basically has to construct it oneself.
[...] If you put the above points all together, you come up with a heuristic argument for the Scary Idea. Roughly, the argument goes something like: If someone builds an advanced AGI without a provably Friendly architecture, probably it will have a hard takeoff, and then probably this will lead to a superhuman AGI system with an architecture drawn from the vast majority of mind-architectures that are not sufficiently harmonious with the complex, fragile human value system to make humans happy and keep humans around.
The line of argument makes sense, if you accept the premises.
But, I don't.
Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It), October 29 2010. Thanks to XiXiDu for the pointer.