I'm annoyed by various people who seem to be complaining about the book title being "unreasonable" – who don't merely disagree with the title of "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies", but, think something like: "Eliezer and Nate violated a Group-Epistemic-Norm with the title and/or thesis."

I think the title is reasonable.

I think the title is probably true – I'm less confident than Eliezer/Nate, but I don't think it's unreasonable for them to be confident in it given their epistemic state. (I also don't think it's unreasonable to feel less confident than me – it's a confusing topic that it's reasonable to disagree about.).

So I want to defend several decisions about the book I think were:

A) actually pretty reasonable from a meta-group-epistemics/comms perspective

B) very important to do.

I've heard different things from different people and maybe am drawing a cluster where there [...]

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Outline:

(03:08) 1. Reasons the Everyone Dies thesis is reasonable

(03:14) What the book does and doesnt say

(06:47) The claims are presented reasonably

(13:24) 2. Specific points to maybe disagree on

(16:35) Notes on Niceness

(17:28) Which plan is Least Impossible?

(22:34) 3. Overton Smashing, and Hope

(22:39) Or: Why is this book really important, not just reasonable?

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 20th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/voEAJ9nFBAqau8pNN/the-title-is-reasonable

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.