I agree long term reputation is valuable, but the hard question is “how valuable”. It isn’t priceless but yes, I agree it’s possibly underrated by EAs. But like, when should we use it. What actions should it stop?
You can’t buy reputation, as the OP pointed out, and you can’t spend it either, e.g. by lending one’s name to dodgy projects, or getting people to take a lie on trust. You use reputation by having it, and the OP described things flowing towards those of good reputation. The actions that maintaining your reputation should stop are those that would damage it. The question is rather, what qualities do EAs want themselves and the EA movement to have a reputation for?
You can’t buy reputation, as the OP pointed out, and you can’t spend it either, e.g. by lending one’s name to dodgy projects, or getting people to take a lie on trust. You use reputation by having it, and the OP described things flowing towards those of good reputation. The actions that maintaining your reputation should stop are those that would damage it. The question is rather, what qualities do EAs want themselves and the EA movement to have a reputation for?
Yes, I think this is a pretty central question. To cross the streams a little, I did talk about this a bit more in the EA Forums comments section: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5oTr4ExwpvhjrSgFi/things-i-learned-by-spending-five-thousand-hours-in-non-ea?commentId=KNCg8LHn7sPpQPcR2