I don't think there is any harm in laypeople being involved. The current state is that the answers aren't clear. You don't have to be a theoretical physicist to understand or appreciate that. Interested people, expert or not, should be free to follow along to the extent they are able or interested.

There's nothing inherently wrong with following esoteric debates raised by quasi-outsiders with a controversial, novel, unproven idea in some technical field, if you want to. But it's pretty time-inefficient, since an overwhelming proportion of such ideas inevitably turn out to be wrong.

I don't think efficiency is a relevant factor because laypeople, by definition, are only learning about this stuff out of curiosity. It's not going to be used for anything. If you efficiently or inefficiently learn stuff you're not going to use I don't see what the difference is.