This is a crosspost for Unfalsifiable stories of doom by Matthew Barnett, Ege Erdil, and Tamay Besiroglu, which was originally published on Mechanize's website on 25 November 2025.

Matthew Barnett, Ege Erdil, Tamay Besiroglu
November 25, 2025

Our critics tell us that our work will destroy the world.

We want to engage with these critics, but there is no standard argument to respond to, no single text that unifies the AI safety community. Nonetheless, while this community lacks a central unifying argument, it does have a central figure: Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Moreover, Yudkowsky, along with his colleague Nate Soares (hereafter Y&S), have recently published a book. This new book comes closer than anything else to a canonical case for AI doom. It is titled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”.

Given the title, one would expect the book to be filled with evidence for why, if we build it, everyone will die. But it is not. To prove their case, Y&S rely instead on vague theoretical arguments, illustrated through lengthy parables and analogies. Nearly every chapter either opens with an allegory or is itself a fictional story, with one of the book's three parts consisting entirely [...]

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First published:

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Linkpost URL:
https://www.mechanize.work/blog/unfalsifiable-stories-of-doom/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.