"Eliezer suspects that FAI is indeed one of those problems that would normally take many decades of effort from a whole civilization to conquer, and he wants to do it in a fraction of the time, using many fewer people." pdf,

A whole civilization? Has any scientific problem ever mobilized the resources of a whole civilization? Scientific communities tend to be small and to have wide variations in productivity between subgroups and individual members.

Eliezer,

It seems that cases with such uncertain object level probabilities are those for which the 'outside view' is most suitable.