Certainly it is possible to find success in some areas anonymously. No argument with you there! I view LW-style rationality as a community of practice, a culture of people aggregating, transmitting, and extending knowledge about how to think rationally. As in "The Secret of Our Success," we don't accomplish this by independently inventing the techniques we need to do our work. We accomplish this primarily by sharing knowledge that already exists. Another insight from TSOOS is that people use prestige as a guide for who they should imitate. So rationalists tend to respect people with a reputation for rationality. But what if a reputation for rationality can be cultivated separately from tangible accomplishments? In fact, prestige is already one step removed from the tangible accomplishments. But how do we know if somebody is prestigious? Perhaps a reputation can be built not by gaining the respect of others through a track record of tangible accomplishments, but by persuading others that: a) You are widely respected by other people whom they haven't met, or by anonymous people they cannot identify, making them feel behind the times, out of the loop. b) That the basis on which people allocate prestige conventionally is flawed, and that they should do it differently in a way that is favorable to you, making them feel conformist or conservative. c) That other people's track record of tangible accomplishments are in fact worthless, because they are not of the incredible value of the project that the reputation-builder is "working on," or are suspect in terms of their actual utility. This makes people insecure. d) Giving people an ability to participate in the incredible value you are generating by convincing them to evangelize your concept, and thereby to evangelize you. Or of course, just donating money. This makes people feel a sense of meaning and purpose. I could think of other strategies for building hype. One is to participate in cooperative games, whereb