Did they make a living out of those beliefs?
See, what we have here is a belief cluster that makes the belief-generator feel very good (saving the world, the other smart people are less smart, etc etc) and pays his bills. That is awfully convenient for a reasoning error. Not saying that it is entirely impossible to have a serendipitously useful reasoning error, but doesn't seem likely.
edit: note, I'm not speaking about some inconsequential honesty in idle thought, or anything likewise philosophical. I'm speaking of not exploiting others for money. There's nothing circular about the notion that honest person would not be talking a friend into paying him upfront to fix the car when that honest person does not have any discernible objective reason what so ever to think that he could fix the car, and a dishonest person would talk friend into paying. Now, if we were speaking of a very secretive person that doesn't like to talk of himself, there would've been probability of some big list of impressive accomplishments we haven't heard of...
It's possible we are just using terms differently. I agree that people are biased by their self-interest. I just don't think that bias is a form of dishonesty. It's a very easy mistake to make, and nearly impossible to prevent.
I don't think SIAI is unusually guilty of this or unusually dishonest.
In science, everybody understands that researchers are biased to believing their own results and to believing new results that make their existing work more important. Most professional scientists are routinely in the position of explaining to funding agencies why...
I've spent so much time in the cogsci literature that I know the LW approach to rationality is basically the mainstream cogsci approach to rationality (plus some extra stuff about, e.g., language), but... do other people not know this? Do people one step removed from LessWrong — say, in the 'atheist' and 'skeptic' communities — not know this? If this is causing credibility problems in our broader community, it'd be relatively easy to show people that Less Wrong is not, in fact, a "fringe" approach to rationality.
For example, here's Oaksford & Chater in the second chapter to the (excellent) new Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, the one on normative systems of rationality:
Is it meaningful to attempt to develop a general theory of rationality at all? We might tentatively suggest that it is a prima facie sign of irrationality to believe in alien abduction, or to will a sports team to win in order to increase their chance of victory. But these views or actions might be entirely rational, given suitably nonstandard background beliefs about other alien activity and the general efficacy of psychic powers. Irrationality may, though, be ascribed if there is a clash between a particular belief or behavior and such background assumptions. Thus, a thorough-going physicalist may, perhaps, be accused of irrationality if she simultaneously believes in psychic powers. A theory of rationality cannot, therefore, be viewed as clarifying either what people should believe or how people should act—but it can determine whether beliefs and behaviors are compatible. Similarly, a theory of rational choice cannot determine whether it is rational to smoke or to exercise daily; but it might clarify whether a particular choice is compatible with other beliefs and choices.
From this viewpoint, normative theories can be viewed as clarifying conditions of consistency… Logic can be viewed as studying the notion of consistency over beliefs. Probability… studies consistency over degrees of belief. Rational choice theory studies the consistency of beliefs and values with choices.
They go on to clarify that by probability they mean Bayesian probability theory, and by rational choice theory they mean Bayesian decision theory. You'll get the same account in the textbooks on the cogsci of rationality, e.g. Thinking and Deciding or Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.