Soft forking is dangerous in general because it does not require the consent and acknowledgement of the entire network.
But it doesnt affect everyone, and it doesnt coerce everyone to uppgrade.
Dramatic changes can be imposed by just a handful of devs and a handful of mining pool operators.
No they cant, plus nobody coerces you to download the new wallet, and if you do you can verify the source code
The changes they soft fork in today may be OK, but if you establish it as a precedent... there's no telling what could be soft forked in without node operator's consent, or indeed even without them knowing anything had changed at all.
But establishing a hardfork as precedent would be totally ok....
Say segwit is activated by the handful of pool operators, 1500 nodes upgrade to segwit capable software... you're left with 4500 nodes that don't understand and don't validate the signatures of segwit transactions. This bifurcation of capabilities of the node network is something entirely new to Bitcoin.
They will uppgrade after they see that its better, and if they dont, i guess the update can be revoked.
But if a hardfork fails, all that flip-flopping will seriously damage the reputation of bitcoin, not to mention the network's stability.
A hard fork is the only moral way to make serious changes to the Bitcoin protocol.
Imposing your will on others is never moral.
Mental gymnastics I can't even attempt to match.
I'll leave you to it.