This post kinda necessarily needs to touch multiple political topics at once. Please, everyone, be careful. If it looks like you haven't read the LessWrong Political Prerequisites, I'm more likely than usual to delete your comments.

I think some people are (rightly) worried about a few flavors of Motte and Baily-ing with the IABIED discourse, and more recently, with the Superintelligence Statement.

With IABIED:

"Sure, the motte is 'If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die.'". But I feel like I'm being set up for a bailies like:

"and... Eliezer's frame on how to think about the problem is exactly right" [1]

Or, longer term, not necessarily from the MIRI folk:

"Let's build a giant regulatory apparatus that not only [...]

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Outline:

(02:04 ) Problem: Multi-Stage Motte and Bailey

(05:24 ) Some background examples

(05:28 ) EA, Out to Get You, and Giving Your All

(09:54 ) Privilege and Intellectual Freedom.

(13:19 ) Okay, back to The Problem as I conceive it

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

October 28th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wdWY5nbqwBjNByJuq/mottes-and-baileys-in-ai-discourse

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.