Seems to me that Holden's opinion is something like: "If you can't make the AI reliably friendly, just make it passive, so it will listen to humans instead of transforming the universe according to its own utility function. Making a passive AI is safe, but making an almost-friendly active AI is dangerous. SI is good at explaining why almost-friendly active AI is dangerous, so why don't they take the next logical step?"
But from SI's point of view, this is not a solution. First, it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to make something passive and also generally intellligent and capable of recursive self-improvement. It might destroy the universe as a side effect of trying to do what it percieves as our command. Second, the more technology progresses, the relatively easier it will be to build an active AI. Even if we build a few passive AIs, it does not prevent some other individual or group to build an active AI and use it to destroy the world. Having a blueprint for a passive AI will probably make building active AI easier.
(Note: I am not sure I am representing Holden's or SI's views correctly, but this is how it makes most sense to me.)
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).