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ciphergoth comments on Q&A with experts on risks from AI #1 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Almost all top level physicists in 1930 were highly dismissive about the atomic bomb. Except a handful of them, like Leo Szilard, who even patented it.
Yet, you could not say that Rutherford hasn't discovered a thing, because he did. He split the atom, but did not believe that atoms are splitable enough for an atomic bomb.
What important things have those characters you've interviewed discovered?
Whatever Pat Hayes has invented or discovered (and TBH I would guess it's more likely to be impressive than not), his position is a very common one and worth writing a proper response to, not ad-hom dismissiveness.
Dismissing someone who assigns zero probabilities to things seems like a great time saver.
Unless they just use zero as a shorthand for "a very very tiny probability", as many people do.
For expected utility calculations in Pascal-wagerish scenarios there can be huge difference between various very very tiny magnitudes of probability. "Zero" actually means "so small that it is reasonable to ignore the possibility", i.e. the expected (dis)utility is tiny compared to other choices.
You've learned that there's something such a person doesn't understand, but when so few people do understand that, it's not very strong evidence on the value of continuing to talk to them.
Most people drastically overestimate the value of talking. Most humans don't really believe in words. This is doubly true when discussing complex subjects with large inference jumps.