This conflates research that is well enough aimed to prevent the end of everything good, with the common safety research that is not well aimed and mostly is picking easy, vaguely-useful-sounding things; yup, agreed that most of that research is just bad. It builds capability that could, in principle, be used to ensure everything good survives, but it is by no means the default and nobody should assume publishing their research is automatically a good idea. It very well might be! but if your plan is “advance a specific capability, which is relevant to ensuring good outcomes”, consider the possibility that it’s at least worth not publishing.
Not doing the research entirely is a somewhat different matter, but also one to consider.
This conflates research that is well enough aimed to prevent the end of everything good, with the common safety research that is not well aimed and mostly is picking easy, vaguely-useful-sounding things; yup, agreed that most of that research is just bad. It builds capability that could, in principle, be used to ensure everything good survives, but it is by no means the default and nobody should assume publishing their research is automatically a good idea. It very well might be! but if your plan is “advance a specific capability, which is relevant to ensuring good outcomes”, consider the possibility that it’s at least worth not publishing.
Not doing the research entirely is a somewhat different matter, but also one to consider.