I’m the editor of Cato Unbound, and I’ve been a fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s for several years. I’m fairly sure that I introduced Gene to his work as well.
There is no real story behind the article. There almost never is, with me. It’s just my job to identify interesting and talented writers, and to pay them to write for us. He was overwhelmingly qualified. I asked, and he accepted.
Every semester I teach the Cato Institute’s intern class about elementary forms of argument, logical fallacies, and the like. Something must have clicked for one of the interns, because she asked me what I thought of EY. She recommended some of his papers.
Well. He was totally unknown to me then, but I’ve since added Less Wrong to the sites that I recommend in the talk.
I’ve lurked extensively around here for quite a while, and what disagreements I have with the community consensus are so minor as not to need bothering about. (I’m a bit more of a fatalist about the matter of my own death, for example, in that I personally doubt that I will live a longer lifespan than a typical human has so far. But anyway.)
Keep up the good work, folks. Both my husband (SRStarin) and I always come away from Less Wrong with a lot of great stuff to think and talk about.