where deferring to authority tends to result in the deferrer having more trust in a given fact or position or view than the person of authority themselves has. Mostly because the deferrer did not do the work of actually forming the view and understanding the caveats and limitations, sort of similar to what you talk about in “Deferring can be bad for learning” and “Deferring can interfere with belief formation”. This is an extremely common pattern everywhere, and this site is by no way immune.
I haven’t read through the whole post, but some of what you say about how deferring can go wrong reminded me of my older post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cQLZLFZEwLpRzFLdw/uninformed-elevation-of-trust
where deferring to authority tends to result in the deferrer having more trust in a given fact or position or view than the person of authority themselves has. Mostly because the deferrer did not do the work of actually forming the view and understanding the caveats and limitations, sort of similar to what you talk about in “Deferring can be bad for learning” and “Deferring can interfere with belief formation”. This is an extremely common pattern everywhere, and this site is by no way immune.