[aithrowawaycomm]

I didn't say "dogmatically believe," I said "accepted as plausible" - Nick Bostrom built an academic career out of this nonsense! Effective altruism people uses these theories to justify their advocacy. I would guess most tech people agree the paperclip maximizer is a serious concern.

[cropcirclbureau]

Your observation about how sci-fi trappings are the crack in the armour of techies and generally the modern subject are true but I still find the general disimissal of such activities as pointless as any crackpots musings unfair. Sure, Rationalists have a lot of crackpots in their midst and are generally a hard to defend bunch but falsifiable or not, I think there's value in proposing forms and colors of the unknown unknowns or the unknowables.

Paperclip maximizers may never come to be but what do you know, smart machines may upend the world order in Bostrom's lifetime. I'm not very familiar with his work and the amount of rigour that went to it but I generally expect we'll regret some of the consequences of this technology.