Eliezer doesn't say "Mntfx is a crackpot, and the fact that he hasn't published in peer-reviewed journals proves this". Eliezer doesn't say "M__ is a crackpot, and the fact that he didn't get a university degree proves this". Crackpottery is not the same thing as lacking qualifications.

Mntf_x is a crackpot because he has theories about AI that are radically at variance with (pretty much) everyone else's, and because he repeatedly claims to be able to make an actual AI on the basis of a few unenlightening box-and-arrow diagrams, and because he doesn't seem ever to have done anything to back up his claims about what he has done and can do.

Eliezer's said very little about how he thinks one might go about making an actual AI. He has made no grandiose claims about what he is able to achieve. Such positive claims as he's put forward are generally pretty orthodox. So he doesn't exhibit the same pathologies as Mntf_x.

By all means complain that Eliezer isn't doing enough AI research, or isn't achieving anything, or something. That would at least make some sense; those are accusations that might be worth answering. But whatever Eliezer's failings may be, crackpottery doesn't seem to me to be among them, and in any case you appear to have a bizarrely broken idea of what crackpottery is.

But then, I'm basically feeding a troll here, aren't I?

Eliezer is a gradeschool drop out. How is it that he thinks he has room to claim someone else is a crackpot.

Are you trying to demonstrate seriously flawed thinking as a joke, or do you really think this way?

Notice that the website linked to is not made by Mntf*x, but by a CS researcher named Tristan Miller.

Um, you seem to be confusing authority with truth... and being right with being arrogant.

I thought you left?

The science of winning arguments is called Rhetoric, and it is one of the Dark Arts. Its study is forbidden to rationalists, and its tomes and treatises are kept under lock and key in a particularly dark corner of the Miskatonic University library. More than this it is not lawful to speak.

I recommend looking at some Aristotle rhetoric and rationalist thinking are in no way divorced from one another. In fact part of being an effective rationalist is to make effective use of rhetoric in your arguments. Without going as far as becoming a sophist.

Now as much as I enjoy Yvain's religion bashing its really out of place and unbecoming of an educated person. Regardless of the my personal beliefs and the fact that I am sure this post will be voted down or deleted your anti-religion arguments are essentially straw-men.

Let's say you approach a theist (let's call him Theo) and say "How can you, a grown man, still believe in something stupid like talking snakes and magic sky kings? Don't you know you people are responsible for the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War and the Spanish Inquisition? You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Let us not forget that many of the great rationalists who's shoulders you stand on, and many scientists who's shoulders you stand on are or were Christians. This argument is fundamentally wrong headed you are claiming for atheists some moral high ground which isn't theirs to claim. Ironically enough you share many of the same values as these Christians who's ideas you spurn.

Then as an aside there is this claim of all the evidence that points to the non-existence of God. The problem is that the statement "God exists" is formally unprovable. There is no mathematical proof that God does not exist. You can argue that the evidence points in that direction but straw-men of the opposing position does not do anyone any favors and does not make your case.

If you wonder why atheists like yourself have trouble convincing religious people its because you start the argument assuming your opponent is an idiot and that understanding their world view is irrelevant. Unfortunately this is not the case the most effective way to deal with religious arguments is to debunk them from the inside out. This requires and necessitates you have a clear and accurate understanding of the opposing position. It also means that you don't assume you opponent is an idiot.

I don't think I can answer this, since I think I was a rationalist by nature - at least back to the age of 5 or 6, when I was upset by logical fallacies in the Bible. My life has been more one of discovering things that being a rationalist made me bad at, and things that being a rationalist given bad information made me bad at, and trying to fix them.

I'm bad at translating thought into action, because I want to gather more data and do more analysis. I'm bad at status games, because I internalized egalitarian values to the extent that I find it painful to assert dominance over anyone. I'm bad at self-promotion and displaying value, because I was taught that doing so was prideful. Etc. A familiar story, I think.

To be clear I am not promoting religon here, but have any of you who are bashing Christianity ever actually talked to a real theologian? Or are all of your views of Christianity based on TV preachers and the common mob who don't know anything when it comes to defending what they believe? Just as with any other area there is a barrier to admission like in physics you have to know the math otherwise you have really nothing to contribute. If you want to contribute to Christianity you have to understand the belief system and its reasoning and the average person probably doesn't. The same goes for physics how many average people do think can actually solve the field equations? In Christianity how many of the people who claim to believe have gone to Seminary? Unless you are arguing with scholars of Christianity this bashing seems to me to be like finding some person who claims to be a physicist but can't do basic algebra and then discounting physics because of that persons opinion.