I agree that the correlation between number of upvotes on EA forum and LW posts/comments and impact isn’t very strong. (My sense is that it’s somewhere between weak and strong, but not very weak or very strong.) I also agree that most of the reasons you list are relevant.
But how I’d frame this is that—for example—a post being more accessible increases the post’s expected upvotes even more than it increases its expected impact. I wouldn’t say “Posts that are more accessible get more upvotes, therefore the correlation is weak”, because I think increased accessibility will indeed increase a post’s impact (holding other factor’s constant).
Same goes for many of the other factors you list.
E.g., more sharing tends to both increase a post’s impact (more readers means more opportunity to positively influence people) and signal that the post would have a positive impact on each reader (as that is one factor—among many—in whether people share things). So the mere fact that sharing probably tends to increase upvotes to some extent doesn’t necessarily weaken the correlation between upvotes and impact. (Though I’d guess that sharing does increase upvotes more than it increases/signals impact, so this comment is more like a nitpick than a very substantive disagreement.)
I agree that the correlation between number of upvotes on EA forum and LW posts/comments and impact isn’t very strong. (My sense is that it’s somewhere between weak and strong, but not very weak or very strong.) I also agree that most of the reasons you list are relevant.
But how I’d frame this is that—for example—a post being more accessible increases the post’s expected upvotes even more than it increases its expected impact. I wouldn’t say “Posts that are more accessible get more upvotes, therefore the correlation is weak”, because I think increased accessibility will indeed increase a post’s impact (holding other factor’s constant).
Same goes for many of the other factors you list.
E.g., more sharing tends to both increase a post’s impact (more readers means more opportunity to positively influence people) and signal that the post would have a positive impact on each reader (as that is one factor—among many—in whether people share things). So the mere fact that sharing probably tends to increase upvotes to some extent doesn’t necessarily weaken the correlation between upvotes and impact. (Though I’d guess that sharing does increase upvotes more than it increases/signals impact, so this comment is more like a nitpick than a very substantive disagreement.)