It would have given my mom the wrong impression about AI extinction risk (that it sounds crazy)
“It sounds crazy” is a correct impression, by definition. I assume you mean “the wrong impression (that it is crazy)”.
But there’s a fine line between “I won’t mention this because people will get the wrong impression (that it’s crazy)” and “I won’t mention this because people will get the wrong impression (that it’s false)”. The former is a subset of the latter; are you going to do the latter and conceal all information that might call your ideas into doubt?
(One answer might be “well, I won’t conceal information that would lead to a legitimate disagreement based on unflawed facts and reasoning. Thinking I’m crazy is not such a disagreement”. But I see problems with this. If you believe in X, you by definition think that all disagreement with X is flawed, so this doesn’t restrict you at all.)
I would say don’t conceal any important information. But you don’t have to lead with information that sounds crazy. Maybe bioweapons don’t make it into the 1 minute elevator pitch, but can be explained in the 10 minute version, or during an ensuing back-and-forth. If bioweapons were somehow critical to the AI extinction argument I wouldn’t say this, but all the sci-fi stuff isn’t actually part of the core argument anyway.
“It sounds crazy” is a correct impression, by definition. I assume you mean “the wrong impression (that it is crazy)”.
But there’s a fine line between “I won’t mention this because people will get the wrong impression (that it’s crazy)” and “I won’t mention this because people will get the wrong impression (that it’s false)”. The former is a subset of the latter; are you going to do the latter and conceal all information that might call your ideas into doubt?
(One answer might be “well, I won’t conceal information that would lead to a legitimate disagreement based on unflawed facts and reasoning. Thinking I’m crazy is not such a disagreement”. But I see problems with this. If you believe in X, you by definition think that all disagreement with X is flawed, so this doesn’t restrict you at all.)
I would say don’t conceal any important information. But you don’t have to lead with information that sounds crazy. Maybe bioweapons don’t make it into the 1 minute elevator pitch, but can be explained in the 10 minute version, or during an ensuing back-and-forth. If bioweapons were somehow critical to the AI extinction argument I wouldn’t say this, but all the sci-fi stuff isn’t actually part of the core argument anyway.