Do you guys deliberately go out of your way to evangeliz to Jaan tallin and thiel or is that source of funds a lucky break?
I agree with Eliezer that the main difficulty is in getting top-quality, relatively rational people to spend hundreds of hours being educated, working through the arguments, etc.
Jaan has done a surprising amount of that and also read most or all of the Sequences. Thiel has not yet decided to put in that kind of time.
Here's a list of people I'd want on that committee if they were willing to put in hundreds of hours catching up and working through the arguments with us: Scott Aaronson, Peter Norvig, Stuart Russell, Michael Nielsen.
I'd probably be able to add...
In the past, people like Eliezer Yudkowsky (see 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) have argued that MIRI has a medium probability of success. What is this probability estimate based on and how is success defined?
I've read standard MIRI literature (like "Evidence and Import" and "Five Theses"), but I may have missed something.
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(Meta: I don't think this deserves a discussion thread, but I posted this on the open thread and no-one responded, and I think it's important enough to merit a response.)