- What reproduction? What would you consider a successful reproduction, for that matter? If I told you I reenacted the experiment at home with a friend, would you consider this a reproduction? Someone saying they reproduced it on the internet would convince you? What are your standards of quality?

- What is the goal of the experiment? Is the goal "show that a transhuman AI can convince a human gatekeeper to set it free"? Or is it actually "show that a huthatman can talk another human into performing a task", or even "an internet (semi)celebrity can convince a like-minded person into saying they would perform a task of very low real-world stakes". How would you tell each of these goals apart?

- The results are most definitely not public. What is public is what Yudkowsky claims the results were, but since the transcripts are secret and there are no witnesses, how do we know they are true (or even not assuming dishonesty or advanced crankiness, how can we tell if they are flawed?). Would you believe me if I told you I have a raygun that miniaturizes people, that I have tested it at home and it works, and that I have a (very small) group of people who will tell you what I say is true? No, I cannot show you the raygun or the miniaturized people, but I can tell you it was a success!

- "A transhuman mind will likely be able to convince a human mind" is what is stated as truth in the fictional conversation at the top of the AI-box experiment web page. Yudkowsky has repeatedly provided "justifications", but these are unscientific and unreasonable.

Yudkowsky claims that because a person can convince another person of claiming they would perform a task (setting an hypothetical AI free), that then a "transhuman" mind is likely to convince a human gatekeeper. The logical disconnect is huge. First, that people can convince other people of things is no big revelation. Unfortunately, it doesn't follow that because some people can convince other people of some things in certain scenarios, then people can universally convince other people of arbitrary things in every context. Worse, we don't even know what a "transhuman" mind would be like; assuming it means "faster thoughts" (a random assumption), why would more thoughts per minute translate into higher convincing capacity? Is it true, for that matter, that higher intelligence translates into higher ability to convince others of stuff?

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Another example of methodological flaws: in both runs of the experiment, the participants seem to be selected from a pool of people fascinated by this kind of questions and who would be open to suggestion that a "transhuman" mind can convince them of stuff. Let's look at them:

First participant: Nathan Russell. Introduces himself as

> "I'm a sophomore CS major, with a strong interest in transhumanism, and just found this list."

Then shows interests in a similar experiment and considers how it could be designed. Note that the list itself, SL4, is for people interested in the "Singularity". Enough said.

Second participant: David McFadzean. Correctly claims the first experiment is not proof of anything, and is willing to take part in a second experiment. Later Yudkowsky describes him like this:

> "David McFadzean has been an Extropian for considerably longer than I have - he maintains extropy.org's server, in fact - and currently works on Peter Voss's A2I2 project."

The mentioned website still exists and it has something to do with a Transhumanist Institute. I start to see a pattern here.