In the EA space, people like Will sharing every thought they have could in some cases have negative effects because people in EA have a history of deferring (and it gets worse the more Will talks to EAs about EA).
If Will had a weekly podcast where he was like “Does lobster welfare matter? Ehh, probably not” and “I’d love to see an EA working on every nuclear submarine” that wouldn’t actually be a good thing, even if he believed both of those points. I predict a small group of EAs would love the podcast, defer to it way too much, and adopt Will’s opinions wholesale.
(I notice that all three of your examples are situations where you wanted people to adopt the public intellectual’s opinions wholesale)
In the EA space, people like Will sharing every thought they have could in some cases have negative effects because people in EA have a history of deferring (and it gets worse the more Will talks to EAs about EA).
If Will had a weekly podcast where he was like “Does lobster welfare matter? Ehh, probably not” and “I’d love to see an EA working on every nuclear submarine” that wouldn’t actually be a good thing, even if he believed both of those points. I predict a small group of EAs would love the podcast, defer to it way too much, and adopt Will’s opinions wholesale.
(I notice that all three of your examples are situations where you wanted people to adopt the public intellectual’s opinions wholesale)