I agree with Nesov and can offer a personal example here. I have a crypto design that was only "published" to a mailing list and on my homepage, and it still got eighty-some citations according to Google Scholar.

Also, just because you (Eliezer) don't like playing status games, doesn't mean it's not rational to play them. I hate status games too, but I can get away with ignoring them since I can work on things that interest me without needing external funding. Your plans, on the other hand, depend on donors, and most potential donors aren't AI or decision theory experts. What do they have to go on except status? What Nesov calls "a bureaucratic formality in the funding/hiring process" is actually a human approximation to group rationality, I think.