Keep in mind that talking with regard to solutions is just so darn useful. Even if you propose an overly specific solution early, than it has a large surface area of features that can be attacked to prove it incompatible with the problem. You can often salvage and mutate what's left of the broken idea. There's not a lot of harm in that, rather there is a natural give and take whereby dismissing a proposed solution requires identifying what part of the problem requirements are contradicted, and it may very well not have occurred to you to specify that requirement in the first place.
I believe it has been observed that experts almost always talk in terms of candidate solutions, and amateurs attempt to build up from a platform of the problem itself. Experts of course having objectively better performance. The algorithm for provably moral superintelligences might not have a lot of prior solutions to draw from, but you could, for instance, find some inspiration even from the outside view of how some human political systems have maintained generally moral dispositions.
There is a bias to associate your status with ideas you have vocalized in the past since they reflect on the quality of your thinking, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The Maier quote comes off as way to strong for me. And what's with this conclusion:
While I have no objective criterion on which to judge the quality of the problem solving of the groups, Maier's edict appears to foster better solutions to problems.
Barring a major collapse of human civilization (due to nuclear war, asteroid impact, etc.), many experts expect the intelligence explosion Singularity to occur within 50-200 years.
That fact means that many philosophical problems, about which philosophers have argued for millennia, are suddenly very urgent.
Those concerned with the fate of the galaxy must say to the philosophers: "Too slow! Stop screwing around with transcendental ethics and qualitative epistemologies! Start thinking with the precision of an AI researcher and solve these problems!"
If a near-future AI will determine the fate of the galaxy, we need to figure out what values we ought to give it. Should it ensure animal welfare? Is growing the human population a good thing?
But those are questions of applied ethics. More fundamental are the questions about which normative ethics to give the AI: How would the AI decide if animal welfare or large human populations were good? What rulebook should it use to answer novel moral questions that arise in the future?
But even more fundamental are the questions of meta-ethics. What do moral terms mean? Do moral facts exist? What justifies one normative rulebook over the other?
The answers to these meta-ethical questions will determine the answers to the questions of normative ethics, which, if we are successful in planning the intelligence explosion, will determine the fate of the galaxy.
Eliezer Yudkowsky has put forward one meta-ethical theory, which informs his plan for Friendly AI: Coherent Extrapolated Volition. But what if that meta-ethical theory is wrong? The galaxy is at stake.
Princeton philosopher Richard Chappell worries about how Eliezer's meta-ethical theory depends on rigid designation, which in this context may amount to something like a semantic "trick." Previously and independently, an Oxford philosopher expressed the same worry to me in private.
Eliezer's theory also employs something like the method of reflective equilibrium, about which there are many grave concerns from Eliezer's fellow naturalists, including Richard Brandt, Richard Hare, Robert Cummins, Stephen Stich, and others.
My point is not to beat up on Eliezer's meta-ethical views. I don't even know if they're wrong. Eliezer is wickedly smart. He is highly trained in the skills of overcoming biases and properly proportioning beliefs to the evidence. He thinks with the precision of an AI researcher. In my opinion, that gives him large advantages over most philosophers. When Eliezer states and defends a particular view, I take that as significant Bayesian evidence for reforming my beliefs.
Rather, my point is that we need lots of smart people working on these meta-ethical questions. We need to solve these problems, and quickly. The universe will not wait for the pace of traditional philosophy to catch up.