I actually thought the opposite - that he seems to be seriously thinking about AGI from a broader intellectual standpoint than most ML researchers. With that said, I was a little confused when he said evolution was more optimized for locomotion/vision than language. Like yes, language is super recent, but communication in general is not.
Yup, Dwarkesh needs to broaden his intellectual scope, and the Sutton interview completely exposed the echo chamber he's been inhabiting. There is no certainty in science, and I don't think building 'AGI' will be any exception.
But there is no way to know who is truly the 'best'. The people who position and market themselves to be viewed as the best are the only ones who even have a chance to be viewed as such. So if you're a great researcher but don't project yourself that way, no one will ever know you're a great researcher (except for the other great researchers who aren't really invested in communicating how great you are). The system seems to incentivize people to not only optimize for their output but also their image. This isn't a bad thing per se, but is sort of antithetical to the whole shoulder of giants ethos of science.
My practical interpretation of the EMH is more that easily accessible, public information is already priced in. But non-obvious insights may not be simply because the volume of people trading on that information will be smaller.
The answer stems from McCarthy’s deeply disparaging view of modern society, which he considered lost, divorced from nature, history and tradition and heading toward social collapse and apocalypse. “Cormac considered contemporary fiction a waste of time,” said Dennis, “because contemporary writers no longer have a legitimate culture to feed their souls.”