"Jaron's laughter seems largely the laughter of frustrated politesse. This comes out in his speech when he repeats to EY "I've been having this discussion for decades.""
I think that's BS. If Jaron didn't want to discuss AI, then why agree to a BGTV episode with Eliezer, a research fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Eliezer tried to understand what Jaron was saying and asked him questions to get him to better explain his positions. jaron pretty much never tried to make himself clear (probably because there wasn't much to explain in the first place), and he never really explained what he didn't like about Eliezer's position.
How long he's been having this conversation ("for decades" or whatever) only means that he's been having it for a long time, not that he has convincing arguments or that there's any value to what he says.
My Bloggingheads.tv interview with Jaron Lanier is up. Reductionism, zombies, and questions that you're not allowed to answer:
This ended up being more of me interviewing Lanier than a dialog, I'm afraid. I was a little too reluctant to interrupt. But you at least get a chance to see the probes I use, and Lanier's replies to them.
If there are any BHTV heads out there who read Overcoming Bias and have something they'd like to talk to me about, do let me or our kindly producers know.