> Behaviour this irrational suggests to me that we have less conscious control, individually and collectively, than we like to believe.

It's only irrational if you take their words at face value.

Personally, I believe there are two camps of people within Anthropic:

1) People who genuinely believe they are going to create the Machine God. For these people, the reason they continue is because if they don't, someone else might! And if someone else builds it, it's more likely to want to kill them rather than other people! (Whereas, of course, if they build it, it's more likely to want to kill other people!)

2) People who don't believe in this, but pay lip service to it. For these people, the reason they spread the bullshit around is because they think it will make them more money. At everyone else's expense, of course.

And humans being humans, I suspect that there are a fair number of people who hold both these beliefs in their minds at the same time.