A minor personal gripe I have with EA is that it seems like the vast majority of the resources are geared towards what could be called young elites, particularly highly successful people from top universities like Harvard and Oxford.
For instance, opportunities listed on places like 80,000 Hours are generally the kind of jobs that such people are qualified for, i.e. AI policy at RAND, or AI safety researcher at Anthropic, or something similar that I suspect less than the top 0.001% of human beings would be remotely relevant for.
Someone like myself, who graduated from less prestigious schools, or who struggles in small ways to be as high functioning and successful, can feel like we’re not competent enough to be useful to the cause areas we care about.
I personally have been rejected in the past from both 80,000 Hours career advising, and the Long-Term Future Fund. I know these things are very competitive of course. I don’t blame them for it. On paper, my potential and proposed project probably weren’t remarkable. The time and money should go to the those who are most likely to make a good impact. I understand this.
It just, I guess I just feel like I don’t know where I should fit into the EA community. Even just many people on the forum seem incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, kind, and talented. The people at the EA Global I atttended in 2022 were clearly brilliant. In comparison, I just feel inadequate. I wonder if others who don’t consider themselves exceptional also find themselves intellectually intimidated by the people here.
We do probably need the best of the best to be involved first and foremost, but I think we also need the average, seemingly unremarkable EA sympathetic person to be engaged in some way if we really want to be more than a small community, to be as impactful as possible. Though, maybe I’m just biased to believe that mass movements are historically what led to progress. Maybe a small group of elites leading the charge is actually what it takes?
I don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s just some thoughts that have been in the back of my head for a while. This is definitely not worth a full post, so I’m just gonna leave it as a quick take.
Unfortunately, a single organisation can’t do everything. There’s a lot of advantages of picking a particular niche and targeting it, so I think it makes sense for 80,000 Hours to leave serving other groups of people to other organisations.
Have you heard of Probably Good? Some of the career paths they suggest might be more accessible to you.
You might also want to consider running iterations of the intro course locally. Facilitating can be challenging at times, and not everyone will necessarily be good at it, but I suspect that most people would become pretty good given enough practice and dedication.
Earning to Give is another option that is more accessible as it just requires a career that pays decently (and there are a lot of different options here).
Firstly, I’m sorry that you feel inadequate compared to people on the EA Forum or at EAGs. I think EA is a pretty weird community and it’s totally reasonable for people to not feel like it’s for them and instead try and do an ambitious amount of good outside the community.
I think this is somewhat orthogonal to feelings of rejection or the broader point that you are making about the higher impact potential of larger communities but I’ve personally felt that whilst EA seems to “care more” about people who are particularly smart, hardworking, and altruistic, it does a good job of giving people from various backgrounds an opportunity to participate—even if it’s differentially easier if you went to a top university.
For example, I think if someone with little or no reputation were to post a few top 10% of rethink priorities quality articles on important topics in fish welfare on the EA Forum they’d gain a lot of career capital and would almost overnight be on various organisation’s radars as someone to consider hiring (or at least be competitive in various application processes). I think that story is probably more true for AI safety. Contrast this with hiring for various hedge funds and consultancies which can be really hard to break into if you didn’t go to a small set of universities.
I don’t fit a typical EA but I’ve managed to get things done by being “Entrepreneurial” and focussing on neglected areas.
Find things that are important, neglected and where you have a comparative advantage.
EAs overrate smartness in a world that prioritises getting shit done quickly. Being the 5th commenter on a google doc is not a path to impact. Create something. Bring a thing into the world people need but noone is doing.
I think there are a lot of roles on the 80k job board and other places that don’t need anyone special but just need good hard generalist workers. A lot of operations roles don’t need anything special but just “work that needs doing”.
For Global health, there are a ton of jobs at the Clinton Health Initiative that you don’t need to move to Africa to do. Other than that, here are some
It can be tough to see things you’d like do do and to feel that they aren’t accessible to you. (although I think you are correct that 80k, and most of the larger EA orgs place focus primarily on elites)
It seems that you’ve already hit on the major points, so maybe you just need to take time to process it and accept it. But I do what to provide two alternatives:
First, people make tradeoffs and sacrifices. Some of the people you see writing impressive essays about animal suffering or creating a project that gets respect and funding, there are a lot of things that they are choosing to not do. This ranges from the simple (they don’t get the fun of following that new show) to the profound (they don’t spend time cultivate a good relationship with a sibling, or they leave a girlfriend to move to a new country).
Second, some of the people on the EA forum aren’t actually so talented or intelligent or thoughtful or kind. We may seem that way sometimes, and maybe sometimes we are, but we also have times when we are foolish or selfish or blundering. A few different framings:
An academic way to think of it is that we are all engaging in impression management.
A casual way to think of it is that we are all cosplaying as intelligent and thoughtful people.
A analogy is to think of a photographer who takes 1,000 pictures, and 900 of them are bad, 90 are okay, and 10 are excellent; but you only see the 10, because that is what gets published.
To use real, anonymized examples
“John Doe” is a real person, who I have met, and is one the top posters here. I consider him kind and intelligent and thoughtful, and he was thoughtless and inconsiderate once, lacking sympathy for another person’s situation. Does that make him a bad person? No. It makes him human.
“Jane” works hard to reduce the suffering in the world and is well known in her cause area. I also observed her (in-person, not online) being inconsiderate of others and deprioritizing them in a way that benefited her organization and her cause. Does that make her a villain? No. She was stressed and busy and focused on other things and trying to accomplish stuff. It just makes her human.
“EA org with funding and respect” had simple typos on their website
A fairly well-known EA org insisted that they will only hire people for a generalist role with both a specific professional background and several years of leadership/management experience at an EA organization. (which is somewhat ridiculous, as there are only a handful of people in the world who meet this standard)
Job applications (an area I am somewhat familiar with) are often rejected for reasons unrelated to the person’s ability to do the job. Maybe you’ve heard of the idea that candidates get rejected if the decision-maker wouldn’t want to spend time stuck in an airport with them. I haven’t heard anyone specifically reference this heuristic, but I’ve seen similar things: people are rejected because of vibes.
So what I’m saying here is that people (and the organizations that people work for) make mistakes, some trivial, and some major. It is possible that you are looking at other people’s highlight reels, and assuming that it represents their normal performance.
First of all, do not give up! And keep fighting/trying to reach your goals :)
I am not sure how the 80,000 Hours career advising and the Long-Term Future Fund work, but it might be good if they check some internal bias that selects people from certain universities. So, we shouldn’t take it personal as not worthy enough.
I attended one of these schools, and I guarantee you most of the people there are quite normal.[1] It could be that many of the successful applicants at the funds have some kind of support that you do not currently have.
Many jobs are prioritised for people coming from elite schools and/or with the right connections. Or at least this is what I have seen. We might get rejected even if we are better than someone else.
What to do then? I would say you need to higher your chances of achieving your goals. One way is to play in some unexplored space. You gotta find a niche, and connect with people. Talk to people, and spam people around to get the ball rolling :)
By the end of the day, you gotta believe in yourself, no matter how smart/athletic/contributing you are. And this is what I say is the most important trait.[2]
People I met that entered just for a master are nothing special, except for a few really amazing people, graduate/PhD level I would say 50-50, and undergraduate level is the one with the highest variance, with truly out of sample kids or just low performance. I have also met people from some non-elite/low-ranking schools, and some of them are very intelligent and would be easily in the top cohort at elite schools.
I believe that everyone in EA should try to use the SHOW framework to really see how they can advance their impact. To reiterate:
1. Get Skilled: Use non-EA opportunities to level up on those abilities EA needs most.
2. Get Humble: Amplify others’ impact from a more junior role.
3. Get Outside: Find things to do in EA’s blind spots, or outside EA organizations.
4. Get Weird: Find things no one is doing.
I do think getting skilled is the most practical advice. And if that fails, you can always get humble: if you make an EA 10% more effective you already contributed 10% of their impact!
A minor personal gripe I have with EA is that it seems like the vast majority of the resources are geared towards what could be called young elites, particularly highly successful people from top universities like Harvard and Oxford.
For instance, opportunities listed on places like 80,000 Hours are generally the kind of jobs that such people are qualified for, i.e. AI policy at RAND, or AI safety researcher at Anthropic, or something similar that I suspect less than the top 0.001% of human beings would be remotely relevant for.
Someone like myself, who graduated from less prestigious schools, or who struggles in small ways to be as high functioning and successful, can feel like we’re not competent enough to be useful to the cause areas we care about.
I personally have been rejected in the past from both 80,000 Hours career advising, and the Long-Term Future Fund. I know these things are very competitive of course. I don’t blame them for it. On paper, my potential and proposed project probably weren’t remarkable. The time and money should go to the those who are most likely to make a good impact. I understand this.
It just, I guess I just feel like I don’t know where I should fit into the EA community. Even just many people on the forum seem incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, kind, and talented. The people at the EA Global I atttended in 2022 were clearly brilliant. In comparison, I just feel inadequate. I wonder if others who don’t consider themselves exceptional also find themselves intellectually intimidated by the people here.
We do probably need the best of the best to be involved first and foremost, but I think we also need the average, seemingly unremarkable EA sympathetic person to be engaged in some way if we really want to be more than a small community, to be as impactful as possible. Though, maybe I’m just biased to believe that mass movements are historically what led to progress. Maybe a small group of elites leading the charge is actually what it takes?
I don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s just some thoughts that have been in the back of my head for a while. This is definitely not worth a full post, so I’m just gonna leave it as a quick take.
Unfortunately, a single organisation can’t do everything. There’s a lot of advantages of picking a particular niche and targeting it, so I think it makes sense for 80,000 Hours to leave serving other groups of people to other organisations.
Have you heard of Probably Good? Some of the career paths they suggest might be more accessible to you.
You might also want to consider running iterations of the intro course locally. Facilitating can be challenging at times, and not everyone will necessarily be good at it, but I suspect that most people would become pretty good given enough practice and dedication.
Earning to Give is another option that is more accessible as it just requires a career that pays decently (and there are a lot of different options here).
Firstly, I’m sorry that you feel inadequate compared to people on the EA Forum or at EAGs. I think EA is a pretty weird community and it’s totally reasonable for people to not feel like it’s for them and instead try and do an ambitious amount of good outside the community.
I think this is somewhat orthogonal to feelings of rejection or the broader point that you are making about the higher impact potential of larger communities but I’ve personally felt that whilst EA seems to “care more” about people who are particularly smart, hardworking, and altruistic, it does a good job of giving people from various backgrounds an opportunity to participate—even if it’s differentially easier if you went to a top university.
For example, I think if someone with little or no reputation were to post a few top 10% of rethink priorities quality articles on important topics in fish welfare on the EA Forum they’d gain a lot of career capital and would almost overnight be on various organisation’s radars as someone to consider hiring (or at least be competitive in various application processes). I think that story is probably more true for AI safety. Contrast this with hiring for various hedge funds and consultancies which can be really hard to break into if you didn’t go to a small set of universities.
I don’t fit a typical EA but I’ve managed to get things done by being “Entrepreneurial” and focussing on neglected areas.
Find things that are important, neglected and where you have a comparative advantage.
EAs overrate smartness in a world that prioritises getting shit done quickly. Being the 5th commenter on a google doc is not a path to impact. Create something. Bring a thing into the world people need but noone is doing.
I think there are a lot of roles on the 80k job board and other places that don’t need anyone special but just need good hard generalist workers. A lot of operations roles don’t need anything special but just “work that needs doing”.
As some examples https://jobs.lever.co/aisafety/c5269975-e074-44ee-ad32-9ff521f4d709 this is a good job if someone wants something in AI safety.
This is more of an EA infrastructure role https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/careers/operations-associate
Another AI role https://careers.rethinkpriorities.org/en/postings/b6cbef86-5239-4218-9aaa-8b7fe660db72
Another AI role https://www.arena.education/operations-lead
For animal welfare, I would say the bulk of the jobs don’t need anyone who is some kind of 0.001% person.
https://animal-equality.rippling-ats.com/job/807514/operations-manager
https://www.fishwelfareinitiative.org/pa
For Global health, there are a ton of jobs at the Clinton Health Initiative that you don’t need to move to Africa to do. Other than that, here are some
https://malariaconsortium.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/3701297?cid=2061&t=Compliance-Manager
It can be tough to see things you’d like do do and to feel that they aren’t accessible to you. (although I think you are correct that 80k, and most of the larger EA orgs place focus primarily on elites)
It seems that you’ve already hit on the major points, so maybe you just need to take time to process it and accept it. But I do what to provide two alternatives:
First, people make tradeoffs and sacrifices. Some of the people you see writing impressive essays about animal suffering or creating a project that gets respect and funding, there are a lot of things that they are choosing to not do. This ranges from the simple (they don’t get the fun of following that new show) to the profound (they don’t spend time cultivate a good relationship with a sibling, or they leave a girlfriend to move to a new country).
Second, some of the people on the EA forum aren’t actually so talented or intelligent or thoughtful or kind. We may seem that way sometimes, and maybe sometimes we are, but we also have times when we are foolish or selfish or blundering. A few different framings:
An academic way to think of it is that we are all engaging in impression management.
A casual way to think of it is that we are all cosplaying as intelligent and thoughtful people.
A analogy is to think of a photographer who takes 1,000 pictures, and 900 of them are bad, 90 are okay, and 10 are excellent; but you only see the 10, because that is what gets published.
To use real, anonymized examples
“John Doe” is a real person, who I have met, and is one the top posters here. I consider him kind and intelligent and thoughtful, and he was thoughtless and inconsiderate once, lacking sympathy for another person’s situation. Does that make him a bad person? No. It makes him human.
“Jane” works hard to reduce the suffering in the world and is well known in her cause area. I also observed her (in-person, not online) being inconsiderate of others and deprioritizing them in a way that benefited her organization and her cause. Does that make her a villain? No. She was stressed and busy and focused on other things and trying to accomplish stuff. It just makes her human.
“EA org with funding and respect” had simple typos on their website
“Anonymous ORG_XYZ” posted sloppy inaccurate/misleading information.
A fairly well-known EA org insisted that they will only hire people for a generalist role with both a specific professional background and several years of leadership/management experience at an EA organization. (which is somewhat ridiculous, as there are only a handful of people in the world who meet this standard)
Job applications (an area I am somewhat familiar with) are often rejected for reasons unrelated to the person’s ability to do the job. Maybe you’ve heard of the idea that candidates get rejected if the decision-maker wouldn’t want to spend time stuck in an airport with them. I haven’t heard anyone specifically reference this heuristic, but I’ve seen similar things: people are rejected because of vibes.
So what I’m saying here is that people (and the organizations that people work for) make mistakes, some trivial, and some major. It is possible that you are looking at other people’s highlight reels, and assuming that it represents their normal performance.
First of all, do not give up! And keep fighting/trying to reach your goals :)
I am not sure how the 80,000 Hours career advising and the Long-Term Future Fund work, but it might be good if they check some internal bias that selects people from certain universities. So, we shouldn’t take it personal as not worthy enough.
I attended one of these schools, and I guarantee you most of the people there are quite normal.[1] It could be that many of the successful applicants at the funds have some kind of support that you do not currently have.
Many jobs are prioritised for people coming from elite schools and/or with the right connections. Or at least this is what I have seen. We might get rejected even if we are better than someone else.
What to do then? I would say you need to higher your chances of achieving your goals. One way is to play in some unexplored space. You gotta find a niche, and connect with people. Talk to people, and spam people around to get the ball rolling :)
By the end of the day, you gotta believe in yourself, no matter how smart/athletic/contributing you are. And this is what I say is the most important trait.[2]
Keep up!
People I met that entered just for a master are nothing special, except for a few really amazing people, graduate/PhD level I would say 50-50, and undergraduate level is the one with the highest variance, with truly out of sample kids or just low performance. I have also met people from some non-elite/low-ranking schools, and some of them are very intelligent and would be easily in the top cohort at elite schools.
If I ever found a company, I will choose people based on character and competence. Piece of paper where one studied won’t matter.
I believe that everyone in EA should try to use the SHOW framework to really see how they can advance their impact. To reiterate:
I do think getting skilled is the most practical advice. And if that fails, you can always get humble: if you make an EA 10% more effective you already contributed 10% of their impact!