Really, it's not. Tons of people discuss politics without getting their briefs in a knot about it. It's only people that consider themselves highly intelligent that get mind-killed by it. The tendency to dismiss your opponent out-of-hand as unintelligent isn't that common elseways.

There's a reason why it's general advice to not talk about religion, sex and politics. It's not because the average person does well in discussing politics.

Dismiss your opponent out-of-hand as unintelligent isn't the only failure mode of politics mindkill. I don't even think it's the most important one.

You're not the only one expressing hesitation at the idea of widespread acceptance of uFAI risk, but unless you can really provide arguments for exactly what negative effects it is very likely to have, some of us are about ready to start a chain mail of our own volition.

How effective do you consider chain letter to be at stopping NSA spying? Do you think they will be more effective at stopping them from developing the AIs that analyse that data?

You're not the only one expressing hesitation at the idea of widespread acceptance of uFAI risk, but unless you can really provide arguments for exactly what negative effects it is very likely to have, some of us are about ready to start a chain mail of our own volition.

Take two important enviromental challenges and look at the first presidency of Obama. One is limiting CO2 emissions. The second is limiting mercury pollution.

The EPA under Obama was very effective at limiting mercury pollution but not at limiting CO2 emissions.

CO2 emissions are a very political issue charged issue with a lot of mindkill on both sides while mercury pollution isn't. The people who pushed mercury pollution regulation won, not because they wrote a lot of letters.

Your hesitation is understandable, but we need to do something to mitigate the risk here, or the risk just remains unmitigated and all we did was talk about it.

If you want to do something you can, earn to give and give money to MIRI.

People researching AI who've argued with Yudkowsky before and failed to be convinced might begrudge that Yudkowsky's argument has gained widespread attention, but if it pressures them to properly address Yudkowsky's arguments, then it has legitimately helped.

You don't get points for pressuring people to address arguments. That doesn't prevent an UFAI from killing you.

UFAI is an important problem but we probably don't have to solve it in the next 5 years. We do have some time to do things right.