The New York Times treats him as an expert: "Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist and an author of a forthcoming book". He's an Internet rando who has yammered about decision theory, not an actual theorist! He wrote fanfic that claimed to teach rational thinking while getting high-school biology wrong. His attempt to propose a new decision theory was, last I checked, never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and in trying to check again I discovered that it's so obscure it was deleted from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Functional_Decision_Theory

To recapitulate my sneer from an earlier thread, the New York Times respects actual decision theorists so little, it's like the whole academic discipline is trans people or something.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol, I'm a decision theorist because I had to decide whether I should take a shit or shave first today. I am also an author of a forthcoming book because, get this, you're not gonna believe, here's something Big Book doesn't want you to know:

literally anyone can write a book. They don't even check if you're smart. I know, shocking.

Plus "forthcoming" can mean anything, Winds of Winter has also been a "forthcoming" book for quite a while

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol, I’m a decision theorist because I had to decide whether I should take a shit or shave first today.

What's your P(doodoo)

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Changes during the day but it's always > 0.