For me there are a lot of things that sound completely sane but might be just bunk. Antimatter weapons, grey goo, the creation of planet eating black holes by particle accelerators, aliens or string theory. I don't have the necessary education to discern those ideas from an intelligence explosion. They all sound like possibilities to me that might or might not be true. All I can do is to recognize their extraordinary status and subsequently demand the peer-review and assessment of those ideas by a larger and educated audience. Otherwise I run the risk of being swayed by the huge utility associated with those ideas, I run the risk of falling prey to a Pascalian mugger.

I think one could tell a reasonably competent physicist 50 years prior to Schrödinger how to derive quantum mechanics in one paragraph of natural language.

Is Luke Muehlhauser that competent when it comes to all the fields associated with artificial intelligence research?

I'm not sure why you've written your comment, are you just using the opportunity to bring up this old topic again?

It's not old, it becomes more relevant each day. Since I first voiced skepticism about the topic they expanded to the point of having world-wide meetings. At least a few people playing devil's advocate is a healthy exercise in my opinion :-)