I agree with a lot of what other people have said here. I think the key message I would emphasize is that 1) yes, the EA community should do a better job at inclusion of this kind of diversity (among others), but 2) you really just shouldn’t even think too much about “intelligence” in finding your path within EA, bc there is almost certainly SOME way you can make a significant contribution given your unique conditions. To the extent you’re concerned about “intelligence” being a limiting factor, I think this should also incline you to chose topics and types of work that are intrinsically interesting to you. If it’s interesting to you, you’ll naturally engage with the topic intellectually while working in the area (even if your role is peripheral to the intellectual work). Over months and years, the cumulative effect of continual, immersive engagement can be much greater than you would expect when thinking “will I be able to learn X?” before starting out.
I’ll add my own experience, which I think is similar, in case it feels reassuring to you also: I went to a good-but-not-great large public university in the United States where I studied humanities, and worked for the first few years of my career in not-particularly-impressive organizations before finding EA. I was rejected from career coaching by 80k (I think both bc they were relatively capacity constrained at the time & bc I didn’t have any obviously impressive line-items on my CV), but was still very interested in the cause area that I’d chosen. I was never really worried about “intelligence” as a limiting factor on my overall impact per se, but I was definitely not sure I’d be able to master the technical aspects of the area, which did influence my expectations for what kind of roles would be a good fit for me. Because I found the topic interesting though, I kept reading up and eventually got into a junior, operations-type role in a prestigious, relevant organization. I think I got this role actually not at all due to my self-study of the topic, but partly bc the unimpressive, non-impactful thing I was doing at the time was kind of similar to the role I was hired for, and partly bc the hiring manager mis-perceived it as being more impressive/prestigious than it actually was. I think this was basically random luck. In any case, at this organization I found that while the very smartest people indeed seemed much smarter than me, the people in roles that might imply they were much smarter than me were actually not clearly all smarter than me (or even had fundamental skills/aptitudes that I did not), they had just learned different things, which I could also learn, and many of which I did learn through continuing to do self-study (again, I found it intrinsically interesting besides being potentially important/impactful), asking colleagues questions, and just absorbing stuff over time. Since working at this organization, my career in the field has basically gone smoothly, including having opportunities to move into (what people generally perceive as) “smart person” roles or to advance along my previous path. At some point, 80k even basically told me that they probably made a mistake in not offering me career coaching, I think bc they had heard through the grapevine that I was generally adapting well to the environment. My impression is that even if I had been much less capable of understanding the technical aspects of the area, there would have been no lack of opportunities for me to have an impactful career in the space.
I agree with a lot of what other people have said here. I think the key message I would emphasize is that 1) yes, the EA community should do a better job at inclusion of this kind of diversity (among others), but 2) you really just shouldn’t even think too much about “intelligence” in finding your path within EA, bc there is almost certainly SOME way you can make a significant contribution given your unique conditions. To the extent you’re concerned about “intelligence” being a limiting factor, I think this should also incline you to chose topics and types of work that are intrinsically interesting to you. If it’s interesting to you, you’ll naturally engage with the topic intellectually while working in the area (even if your role is peripheral to the intellectual work). Over months and years, the cumulative effect of continual, immersive engagement can be much greater than you would expect when thinking “will I be able to learn X?” before starting out.
I’ll add my own experience, which I think is similar, in case it feels reassuring to you also: I went to a good-but-not-great large public university in the United States where I studied humanities, and worked for the first few years of my career in not-particularly-impressive organizations before finding EA. I was rejected from career coaching by 80k (I think both bc they were relatively capacity constrained at the time & bc I didn’t have any obviously impressive line-items on my CV), but was still very interested in the cause area that I’d chosen. I was never really worried about “intelligence” as a limiting factor on my overall impact per se, but I was definitely not sure I’d be able to master the technical aspects of the area, which did influence my expectations for what kind of roles would be a good fit for me.
Because I found the topic interesting though, I kept reading up and eventually got into a junior, operations-type role in a prestigious, relevant organization. I think I got this role actually not at all due to my self-study of the topic, but partly bc the unimpressive, non-impactful thing I was doing at the time was kind of similar to the role I was hired for, and partly bc the hiring manager mis-perceived it as being more impressive/prestigious than it actually was. I think this was basically random luck.
In any case, at this organization I found that while the very smartest people indeed seemed much smarter than me, the people in roles that might imply they were much smarter than me were actually not clearly all smarter than me (or even had fundamental skills/aptitudes that I did not), they had just learned different things, which I could also learn, and many of which I did learn through continuing to do self-study (again, I found it intrinsically interesting besides being potentially important/impactful), asking colleagues questions, and just absorbing stuff over time.
Since working at this organization, my career in the field has basically gone smoothly, including having opportunities to move into (what people generally perceive as) “smart person” roles or to advance along my previous path. At some point, 80k even basically told me that they probably made a mistake in not offering me career coaching, I think bc they had heard through the grapevine that I was generally adapting well to the environment. My impression is that even if I had been much less capable of understanding the technical aspects of the area, there would have been no lack of opportunities for me to have an impactful career in the space.