@JeffLadish I think because the reward structure of being a bio-ethicist rewards saying level-headed sounding, cautious-sounding, conventional wisdom?

Though I'm not sure why that is.

I guess if you want to radically improve the world, you mostly don't go into a field that is about opining on other people's work, you go into something like Engineering and do the work?

I note that Nick Bostrom is what a Bioethicist should be: he thinks hard about tradeoffs and risks, and crystalizes concepts like the Unilateralist's curse and black ball technologies.

But this is starting from a place of "The world could be vastly better. How do we get there?"

I don't know why bioethics doesn't look more like a field of (less smart) Bostroms.

I guess because everyone's disgust reactions are triggered by the actually good proposals, and in order to make those proposals the consensus of the field a lot of people have to bite the bullet and stick their neck out saying "I know this sounds crazy / absurd / vaguely evil...