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eli_sennesh comments on The Importance of Sidekicks - LessWrong
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Aren't you cherry-picking, even from the single work of fiction you mention? Sure, Frodo and Samwise didn't dedicate their lives to be heroes. But Gandalf and Aragorn did.
And your superhero genre conceits don't seem to match what I've read. It's a near-universal trope of superhero comics that heroes can't lead normal lives and that when they do, they're inevitably reminded of the inherent dangers, e.g. perfect hostages in the form of their loved ones. And it's also another near-universal trope whereby the retired hero is called back into service in The Hour of Dire Need.
I agree that one should be more skeptical of dedicating one's life to Eliezer's cause than a character typically depicted in superhero comics might be given the prospect of super-powers. But let's not forget that Hero is a trope with Real Life examples and dedicating one's life to something is a pretty common occurrence.
In my experience, a lot of people seem to expect that you've dedicated your life to something, as if plain, ordinary human beings who just want to be human beings are not even fantasy novel NPCs but just failing to follow the social rules of real life. I think this might have something to do with the pretensions to Great Purpose of the white-collar professional classes, but I still don't really get it.
This bugs me a whole lot, because despite quite like LW-ian type stuff related to math, statistics, science, machine learning, blah blah blah, it all looks more than a little crazy from the outside, and I also just can't wrap my head around dedicating a whole life to a thing, as if things are allowed to be bigger and more important than people.
-- Rincewind, summarizing my feelings on the subject of causes, including those I genuinely support.