Those seem like very generalizable rationalizations for never actually doing anything.

On rationality amateurs causing harm to the public image of rationality-

• They can (and DO) do this anyways. On LW, reddit, facebook, blogs, vlogs, etc etc. In fact, I would guess that an enthusiastic amateur could cause more overall harm to the movement on the internet, than running a class irl.

• The people who are likely to say EXTREMELY harmful things are extremely unlikely to be the types to decide to lead an organization (require related social skills).

• What do you consider to be your worst case scenario? Worst I can come up with is "I taught a terrible workshop! Who would have thought I shouldn't have talked about infanticide to a room full of new mothers? And that one of them made a viral video about it! I won't be able to teach another class until everyone has forgotten it in about two years! (it is unlikely to have a significant effect on cfar or miri)"

More realistic: "Wow, that was a terrible and boring class! I bet NONE of the twenty people in the room will come back next week. I will have to find new people now."

Neither of these seem worth the level of risk aversion you are recommending here. We are not building an FAI.

• I DO recommend placing yourself on the helpful/harmful binary. Obviously, a person who so new and lacking in the relevant skills that they would cause massive harm would be in the "harmful" category. Unfortunate faux pas made by the type of people in the helpful category are unlikely to be at a large scale.

Regarding harming "potential future efforts along these lines":

• Efforts made by whom?

-By myself? Because I suspect future-me will be significantly more skilled at running classes than current-me despite lack of practice?

-By CFAR? I have never seen anything from them suggesting that other people (even amateurs) should hold off on creating communities. Quite the contrary.They have invested significant effort and resources in spreading materials and knowledge to assist meetup organizers (Writing the Meetup Guide, favoring workshop applicants who are meetup organizers for spots and scholarships, etc).This is strong evidence that CFAR WANTS people to take on leadership roles and grow their local scene. It is unlikely that this is counter to their current or future goals.

-By a yet-unknown organization? Obviously bad reasoning.

• Overly generalizable to "I should never attempt anything I care about, that I don't have an extremely high confidence in succeeding in, because Failure"