Actually I think what distant strangers think can matter a lot to someone, if it corresponds to what they do being highly prestigious. The person experiences that directly through friends/family/random people they meet being impressed (etc).
I guess it’s true that, if most of your friends/people you interact with already think EA is great, the effect is at least a bit weaker (maybe much weaker).
I like the point about “diluting the ‘quality’ of the movement” as being something that potentially biases people against movement growth, it wouldn’t have occurred to me.
This still seems like a weaker effect to me than the one I described, but I guess this at least depends on how deeply embedded in EA the person we’re thinking about is. And of course being deeply embedded in EA correlates strongly with being in a position to influence movement growth.
My reaction to this:
Actually I think what distant strangers think can matter a lot to someone, if it corresponds to what they do being highly prestigious. The person experiences that directly through friends/family/random people they meet being impressed (etc).
I guess it’s true that, if most of your friends/people you interact with already think EA is great, the effect is at least a bit weaker (maybe much weaker).
I like the point about “diluting the ‘quality’ of the movement” as being something that potentially biases people against movement growth, it wouldn’t have occurred to me.
This still seems like a weaker effect to me than the one I described, but I guess this at least depends on how deeply embedded in EA the person we’re thinking about is. And of course being deeply embedded in EA correlates strongly with being in a position to influence movement growth.