In the meantime he wrote the Sequences and HPMoR, and founded MIRI and CFAR. So maybe the distance between his ego and his real output got smaller.
Also, as Eliezer mentions in the Sequences, he used to have an "affective death spiral" about "intelligence", which is probably visible in his old writings, and contributes to the reader's perception of "big ego".
I don't really mind big egos as long as they drive people to produce something useful. (Yeah, we could have a separate debate about how much MIRI or HPMoR are really useful. But the old writings would be irrelevant for that debate.)
He literally wrote plans about what he would do with the billions of dollars the singularity institute would be bringing in by 2005 using the words 'silicon crusade' to describe its actions to bring about the singularity and interstellar supercivilization by 2010 so as to avoid the apocalyptic nanotech war that would have started by then without their guidance. He also went on and on and on about his SAT scores in middle school (which are lower than those of one of my friends, taken via the same program at the same age) and how they proved he is a mutant supergenius who is the only possible person who can save the world.
I am distinctly unimpressed.
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