[ Disclaimer: This is my first post so please don't go easy on me. ]

After reading a handful of comments I am surprised to see so many people think of what Eliezer did here as some sort of "bad" thing. Maybe I'm missing something but after reading all I saw was him convincing the man to continue the discourse even though he initially began to shy away from it.

Perhaps citing a theorem may have intimidated him a little, but in all fairness Eliezer did let him know at the outset that he worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence.