Just wanted to mention that watching this panel was one of the things that convinced me to give AI safety research a try :) Thanks for re-posting, it's a good memory.

To at least try to address your question: one effect could be that there are coordination problems, where many people would be trying to "change the world" in roughly the same direction if they knew that other people would cooperate and work with them. This would result in less of the attention drain you suggest. This seems more like what I've experienced.

I'm more worried about people being stupid than mean, but that could be an effect of the bubble of non-mean people I'm part of.