keep in mind that my opinion is that the whole so called 'theory' of his is about specifying intelligences in English/technobabble so that they would be friendly (which is also specified in English/technobabble), which is of no use what so ever (albeit may be intellectually stimulating and my first impression was that it was some sorta weird rationality training game here, before I noticed folk seriously wanting to donate hard earned dollars for this 'work').
One could for example show formally that the AIXI does not discriminate between wireheaded (input manipulating) solution and non-wireheaded solution; that would make it rather non scary; or one could show that it does, which would make it potentially scary. Ultimately the excuses like "But in order prove that that's not what we want, we also need a formal specification of what we want" are a very bad sign.
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).