No. With a curl install, you cannot audit the source. You cannot know if you have been served the same content as someone else.

You cannot look at version history, check a signed package, etc. etc.

If someone wants to root just a few select machines, you would want people to do a curl install.

If you're going to manually audit the source, you can curl into a file then run bash on it. If you're not going to read the code anyway, there's no harm in curl|bash.

Yes there is, there's a lot of harm, see my comment above.

Hence why I merely opposed actively encouraging this pattern.

I can't stop people from doing potentially dangerous things, but I don't have to promote those things, either.

I don't think the other way is inherently any safer, because people don't tend to actually audit their sources to begin with.