Yudkowsky is one of those people who is all IQ and no judgement. He rationalizes on top of what is basically a fear of the dark, and unfortunately does it well enough to persuade himself and a great number of other people.
A good corrective exercise is to go back and look at his early writing, and evaluate how well his judgement looks in hindsight. My favorite is the idea that XML programming languages were the future, but really, pick your poison.