I'm reading the "You're Calling Who A Cult Leader?" again, and now the answer seems obvious.

"I publicly express strong admiration towards the work of Person X." -- What could possibly be wrong about this? Why are our instincts screaming at us not to do this?

Well, assigning a very high status to someone else is dangerous for pretty much the same reason as assigning a very high status to yourself. (With possible exception if the person you admire happens to be the leader of the whole tribe. Even so, who are you to speak about such topics? As if your opinion had any meaning.) You are challenging the power balance in the tribe. Only instead of saying "Down with the current tribe leader; I should be the new leader!" you say "Down with the current tribe leader; my friend here should be the new leader!"

Either way, the current tribe leader is not going to like. Neither his allies. Neither neutral people, who merely want to prevent another internal fight where they have nothing to gain. All of them will tell you to shut up.

There is nothing bad per se about suggesting that e.g. Douglas R. Hofstadter should be the king of the nonconformist tribe. Maybe we can't unite behind this king, but neither can we unite behind any competitor, so... why not. At worst, some of us will ignore him.

The problem is, we live in a context of a larger society that merely tolerates us, and we know it. Praise Hofstadter too high and someone outside of our circle may notice it. And suddenly the rest of the tribe might decide that it is going to get rid of our ill-mannered faction once and for all. (Not really, but this is what would happen in the ancient jungle.) So we better police ourselves... unless we are ready to take the fight with the current leadership.

Being a strong fan of Douglas R. Hofstadter means challenging those who are strong fans of e.g. Brad Pitt. There is only so much place at the top of the status ladder, and our group is not strong enough to nominate even the highest-status one among us. So we rather not act like we are ready for open confrontation.

The irony is that if Douglas Hofstadter or Paul Graham or Eliezer Yudkowsky actually had their small cults, if they acted like dictators within the cult and ignored the rest of the world, the rest of the world would not care about them. Maybe people would even invent rationalizations about why everything is okay, and why anyone is free to follow anyone or anything. -- The problem starts with suggesting that they could somehow be important in the outside world; that the outside world has a reason to listen to them. That upsets people; the power change that might concern them. Cultish behavior well-contained within the cult doesn't. Saying that all nerds should read Hofstadter, that's okay. -- Saying that even non-nerds lose something valuable when they don't read something written by a member of our faction... now that's a battle call. (Are you suggesting that Hofstadter deserves a similar status to e.g. Dostoyevsky? Are you insane or what? Look at the size of your faction, our faction, and think again.)