I would not be surprised if there was not a very strong relationship between Karma and impact because people tend to be more likely to browse and upvote topics that are easily legible to them. Thus topics related to AI Safety or charities which people are largely familiar tend to attract readership and favorable voting.
On the other hand, novel ideas tend to not get as much attention because of the higher cognitive load on prospective readers and the feeling that a post is not “for them.” I imagine posts with low to medium amount of karma, reflecting approval by a smaller audience that read it carefully, may have much higher impact. When I see posts with hundreds in karma, I often think it’s a well known EA figure or someone coming up with a variation of a favorite EA tune.
I would not be surprised if there was not a very strong relationship between Karma and impact because people tend to be more likely to browse and upvote topics that are easily legible to them. Thus topics related to AI Safety or charities which people are largely familiar tend to attract readership and favorable voting.
On the other hand, novel ideas tend to not get as much attention because of the higher cognitive load on prospective readers and the feeling that a post is not “for them.” I imagine posts with low to medium amount of karma, reflecting approval by a smaller audience that read it carefully, may have much higher impact. When I see posts with hundreds in karma, I often think it’s a well known EA figure or someone coming up with a variation of a favorite EA tune.