It feels to me that he skipped all the fundamentals and everything not immediately rewarding when he taught himself.
The AI position is kind of bizarre. I know that people whom themselves have some sort of ability gap when it comes to innovation - similar to lack of mental visualization capability but for innovation - they assume that all innovation is done by straightforward serial process (the kind that can be very much speed up on computer), similar to how people whom can't mentally visualize assume that the tasks done using mental imagery are done without mental imagery. If you are like this and you come across something like Vinge's "a fire upon the deep", then i can see how you may freak out about foom, 'novamente is going to kill us all' style. There are people whom think AI would eventually obsolete us, but very few of them would believe in same sort of foom.
As for computation theory, he didn't skip all the fundamentals, only some parts of some of them. There are some red flags, though.
By the way, I wonder where "So you want to become Seed AI programmer" article from http://acceleratingfuture.com/wiki (long broken) can be found. It would be useful to have it around or have it publicly disclaimed by Eliezer Yudkowsky: it did help me to decide whether I see any value in SIAI plans or not.
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.