Use the try harder, Luke.

It's a good link. But I would strongly recommend Eliezer did not try harder to do this. Some considerations:

• Eliezer is a terrible politician. Ok, he can get by on a high IQ and plenty of energy. But if you are considering comparative advantage Eliezer should no more devote himself to political advocacy than he should create himself a car out of iron ore.
• Apart from details of presentation the important thing to do is be conformist in all areas except the one in which they make their move. This is a significant limitation on what you can achieve, particularly when what you are attempting to achieve involves interacting with the physical reality and not just the social reality.
• The Sesame Street approach to belief (one of these things is not like the other ones) is a status optimisation, not necessarily an optimal way to increase the influence of an idea. It involves spending years defending the positions of high status individuals and carefully avoiding all contrarian positions until you have the prestige required to make a play for your own territory. Then, you select the work of (inevitably lower status) innovators in a suitable area. Present the ideas yourself and use your prestige to ensure that your terminology becomes adopted and your papers most frequently cited. The innovators can then choose between marginalization, supplication or moving to a new field. If any innovator happens to come up with ideas that challenge your position and you dismiss them as arrogant and smug and award status to others who, by way of supplication, do likewise.

Does this help make a contrarian idea mainstream? Perhaps. But maybe the status exploitation of ideas market is efficient and your participation makes no particular difference. Either way, I consider gaining power in this manner useful for achieving Eliezer's aims only in the same way it would be useful for him to gain power through selling stationary or conquering a small nation. Possibly instrumentally useful but far from comparatively advantageous.