What scares me about AGI deniers is that should we succeed in building AGI, these people would neglect to acknowledge that these minds are perhaps more sensitive to suffering than our own. Imagine the consequences.
Searle hopes for a metacomputational operator that has greater power than mere hypercomputation, and in which physics and mind are implemented, but he lacks the formal education to know what he's doing. Also, he has little social integrity to his audiences.