Weirdness is incredibly important. If people weren't willing to deviate from society and hold weird beliefs, we wouldn't have had the important social movements that ended slavery and pushed back against racism, that created democracy, that expanded social roles for women, and that made the world a better place in numerous other ways.

Well, there is that. But there's also just the fact that being weird is what makes people interesting and fun, the sort of people I want to hang out with.

While many of these ideas might make the world a better place if made into policy, all of these ideas are pretty weird.

I think we need another adjective for the category of ideas that make people uncomfortable due to being substantially morally superior to the status quo. (And I don't even do all those things or believe all those particular ideas are good ones.)

...But we can use this knowledge to our advantage. The halo effect can work in reverse -- if we're normal in many ways, our weird beliefs will seem more normal too. If we have a notion of weirdness as a kind of currency that we have a limited supply of, we can spend it wisely, without looking like a crank.

Well, when propagandizing, yes.

But maybe EA should disconnect a bit more and compartmentalize -- for example, leaving AI risk to MIRI, for example, and not talk about it much, say, on 80,000 Hours.

Yes, this is a very good example of allocating scarce weirdness points in one's propaganda.