finished it just now. They do a good job I think to criticize his arguments, but sadly don't look much deeper than the discussion they discuss. Which is a shame because it leads them to htink he^s just an odd goofball sticking to a core belief... worth listening to if you like them already I think tho!

I think they did pretty well for not knowing anything going into it. E.g. regarding the drone thing, both hosts express clear skepticism about it and its implications despite thinking that the report was accurate. I think their credulity regarding Yudkowski's intellectual substantiveness is just a symptom of information about him being too diffuse. It's easy to find examples of him claiming to be a genius (because that's all he does), but there's no short, simple summary of all the evidence showing that there's nothing substantive behind his words.

I'm equipped. Fuck me, can't Mr. Yudkowsky beat a rando? can't he? wait

You may wish to learn that that's their style - appreciate the argument and then tear it down. They are not both siding big Yud in the sense that they say there's something to him, they are making sure they aren't dunking on him unduly from the beginning. I'm two hours in and there's not anything important they agree with him so far, and about 5 mins after the part you didn't like, they call him a doomsday prophet basically. I can understand if you don't like their style or this podcast, absolutely no problem, and it's always an issue if a larger cultural group discusses the parts of the world we all know about and I think in part that's happening here. (They are wrong about the drone thing, I don't know if they recorded it before that came out or whether they (reasonably) decided it's not worth following, but in the end they make fun of it for being a dumb experiment to anyone whose ever played a first person shooter) In the end this is a psychologist who did some machine learning stuff and an anthropologist who usually make fun of health gurus and Lex Fridman. They are not Big Yud specialists like some here are. They don't claim to be. It's simply a Podcast that looks at the guy critically and comes off disagreeing with him quite a bit.

I don't think they were uncritical, and in any case they decided that it probably doesn't matter because someone could always make an AI that tries to kill people on purpose. They did make fun of his doomerism (one host immediately rated him 5 out of 5 on their "Cassandra complex" scale) and generally thought that his arguments relied on unjustified leaps of reasoning. They also repeatedly pointed out that he seems preoccupied with sci-fi scenarios instead of real-life AI. I thought it was pretty decent for being made by normie non-sneerclubbers who were unfamiliar with his work, you can't expect everyone to wade through the muck like we have.

Assuming that this sub would have the best analysis of big yud is sort of like assuming that r/justiceforjohnnydepp would have the best analysis of the Amber Heard trial. I haven’t listened to the episode yet but I’d put more faith in Matt and Chris just winging it for fun than sneerclub✌️