Well, he estimated the expected effect on risk as insignificant increase of risk. That is to me the strong point; the 'does not reduce' is a weak version prone to eliciting Pascal's wager type response.
I am >.9 confident that donating money to SI doesn't significantly increase human existential risk.
(Edit: Which, on second read, I guess means I agree with Holden as you summarize him here. At least, the difference between "A doesn't significantly affect B" and "A insignificantly affects B" seems like a difference I ought not care about.)
I also think Pascal's Wager type arguments are silly. More precisely, given how unreliable human intuition is when dealing with very low probabilities and when dealing with very large utilities/disut...
I was wondering - what fraction of people here agree with Holden's advice regarding donations, and his arguments? What fraction assumes there is a good chance he is essentially correct? What fraction finds it necessary to determine whenever Holden is essentially correct in his assessment, before working on counter argumentation, acknowledging that such investigation should be able to result in dissolution or suspension of SI?
It would seem to me, from the response, that the chosen course of action is to try to improve the presentation of the argument, rather than to try to verify truth values of the assertions (with the non-negligible likelihood of assertions being found false instead). This strikes me as very odd stance.
Ultimately: why SI seems certain that it has badly presented some valid reasoning, rather than tried to present some invalid reasoning?
edit: I am interested in knowing why people agree/disagree with Holden, and what likehood they give to him being essentially correct, rather than a number or a ratio (that would be subject to selection bias).