Scott criticizes the Example ASI Scenario as the weakest part of the book; I think he’s right, it might be a reasonable scenario but it reads like sci-fi in a way that could easily turn off non-nerds. That said, I’m not sure how it could have done better.
I think the scenario in VIRTUA requires remarkably little suspension of disbelief; it’s still “sci-fi-ish”, but less “sci-fi-ish” than the one in IABIED (according to my model of the general population), and leads to ~doom anyway.
(I feel like I’m groping for a concept analogous to an orthogonal basis in linear algebra—a concept like “the minimal set of words that span an idea”—and the title “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” almost gets there)
You don’t need orthogonality to get a minimal set that spans some idea/subspace/whatever.
I think the scenario in VIRTUA requires remarkably little suspension of disbelief; it’s still “sci-fi-ish”, but less “sci-fi-ish” than the one in IABIED (according to my model of the general population), and leads to ~doom anyway.
You don’t need orthogonality to get a minimal set that spans some idea/subspace/whatever.