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An undocumented benefit of public intellectualizing: the more smart things you’re perceived to have said, the more dumb questions you’re allowed to ask with no reputational damage (in fact you get a rep boost as in “wow, he’s smart but willing to look stupid”)
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That might just be wishful thinking. In practice, I think those stupid questions get singled out and paraded as "this is the idiot's idea of what an intellectual looks like" for the intellectualizer in question.
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If the intellectualizer ends up not paying the cost (being immediately called out and embarrassed) it’s a freebie I think. Can’t control invisible updates of priors or being tagged a lolcow, but you do eventually detect such hidden reputational damage.