Having EA Forum karma tells you two things about a person:
They had the potential to have had a high impact in EA-relevant ways
They chose not to.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the karma system. If you’re worried about having undue power in the discourse, one thing I’ve internalized is to use the strong upvote/downvote buttons very sparingly (e.g. I only strong-upvoted one post in 2022 and I think I never strong-downvoted any post, other than obvious spam).
To modify a joke I quite liked:
I wouldn’t worry too much about the karma system. If you’re worried about having undue power in the discourse, one thing I’ve internalized is to use the strong upvote/downvote buttons very sparingly (e.g. I only strong-upvoted one post in 2022 and I think I never strong-downvoted any post, other than obvious spam).