Excellent advice from Robin Hanson on how to be an effective radical:
This freethinker strategy of being radical on every possible dimension pretty much guarantees that something will go very wrong with at least one of these dimensions.
To have the best chance of succeeding in a radical project, you should instead choose just a few related dimensions on which to make radical choices, and then make conservative conventional choices on all the other dimensions. This strategy minimizes the chance that some other project dimension will go badly wrong and take down your central radical idea with it.
This is is basically why we have to wear jackets and ties at the Cato Institute.
Will Wilkinson 