Satoshi was actually around and communicating with well known people when Bitcoin was released, and he worked collaboratively with well known people to further develop the code, demonstrating obvious intimate familiarity with the code and its thereby authenticating his authorship. If I'm not mistaken a lot of his stuff was PGP signed as well.
These cryptonote people just sort of showed up after some other random guys on the BCE (Bytecoin the bitcoin clone) thread started talking about (BCN) Bytecoin. Most of their posts are extremely vague, high level in nature, and often philosophical rather than making the sort of in-depth technical points that would demonstrate any deep knowledge (the I2P post being one example).
Trust must be earned, though actions and independent verification of claims, especially when anonymous people on the internet can do or claim anything they want.
If they can authenticate any of this, then sure. Otherwise it is just a bunch of guys (or maybe even just one with a bunch of puppets -- we have no idea) on a website that showed up a few months ago.
And as I said, we always listen. Even anonymous people on the internet with no verification of their claims can offer valuable input.