Yeah, I think you're missing the flow-through effects of contributing to the EA hivemind. There's substantial value in having a large number of reasonably well-informed EAs thinking about and discussing EA ideas. It's possible this is insignificant compared to the contributions of a handful of prominent full-time thinkers, but seems like an important and nontrivial question in its own right.
Yeah, I think you're missing the flow-through effects of contributing to the EA hivemind. There's substantial value in having a large number of reasonably well-informed EAs thinking about and discussing EA ideas. It's possible this is insignificant compared to the contributions of a handful of prominent full-time thinkers, but seems like an important and nontrivial question in its own right.