Pinker's letter here seems pretty disingenuous to me. For instance, the arguments he mentions have been refuted to hell and back. Its fine to disagree with the refutations, but to repeat them without the corresponding refutations and why he doesn't agree I think speaks to a lack of seriousness.

On the charge he's engaging in poor faith and with bullying, I think he's basically arguing that technically he's not, because he never called people names, only hypothetical constructs, thought experiments, and argumentative conclusions. This is pretty silly. Here is the first example he offers:

When I said that the doomer scenarios projected alpha-male psychology onto AIs, this was not an ad hominem insinuation that the proponents themselves were alpha males. It was an analysis which proposed that they were applying an inappropriate alpha-male theory of mind (an intuitive psychology) to AI.

I think it is pretty self-evident that this particular defense is quite weak, but to state it plainly: In this world, if you say that someone is projecting "alpha-male psychology" that is indeed as good as a claim that that person is a red-pill incel edgelord and is therefore low-status compared to us high status people who are not red-pill incel edgelords. Thus such red-pill incel edgelords should not be taken seriously.

Indeed, this is basically what Pinker claims above! Note that calling someone an "alpha male" is not actually an insult. If anything, it'd be a compliment. It is the accusation that one would even think in terms of "alpha/beta males" to come to their conclusions which is the insult. And that is exactly what Pinker claims he's doing!

I think there are similar twisty turns of phrase throughout the article, where Pinker consistently says something technically true, but with connotations pointing in the opposite direction of the truth claim. The clearest example here is this quote

And telling young people they will soon perish en masse has costs in their appreciation of the institutions of modernity, their mental health, their confidence to invest in themselves and their society, and their willingness to have children (itself a risk of extinction).

If you think extinction is indeed a real threat, then these sound like fairly reasonable reactions! You should be more skeptical of the "institutions of modernity", invest less, and probably should have fewer children if you think that The End is Nigh.

As for mental health, ideally people would not remain depressed or stressed for long periods of time due to the threat of extinction, but (to get somber for a moment) it is arguably just & right that people should mourn the loss of humanity and the loss of everything we love. Seeing as nobody will be around after all this is lost, it is good to do this before the end rather than after.

That is, the real difference between Pinker and at least me, and most "doomers" (who as has been stated elsewhere are techno-optimists on everything that isn't AI^[1]) isn't disagreements about how to spread awareness about the mundane safety risks of technological advancement, but whether or not AI actually poses a significant chance of killing everyone!

I have found that this particular rhetorical strategy is fairly common! That is, it is pretty common that I have conversations with people in rat-adjacent spaces who know I think AI has a high chance of killing everyone, have disagreements with me which are cruxy with respect to the belief that AI has a high chance of killing everyone, yet when presenting arguments with respect to those disagreements don't say "btw I'm assuming AI won't kill everyone/won't become superintelligence/etc".

I find a lot of arguments can actually be resolved almost immediately by being like "well do you think AI will become superintelligence and kill everyone?"

I'm not certain why people, Pinker included, use this particular rhetorical strategy though, because I think its a pretty bad one! It mostly just makes you look like a fool, because people can just ask you "well do you think AI has a high chance of killing everyone?" and then you have to say "no", and then your adversary can say "would your mind change if you did" and then you have to say "yes".

If I had to guess, I think people are trying to avoid the hard and painful to think about possibility that we all die due to AI, and so they don't even think to themselves about whether the conclusions they're espousing are secretly cruxy with respect to that question.

1. ^{^}

   And in some cases nanotechnology