You are not alone, definitely not alone.
As a community builder, I have several people telling me this on a frequent basis. It’s nice to be able to follow good charities on Twitter, but that does not make up for the direction of the funding and therefore the opportunities and projects that are actually selected and funded, or the fact that most posts on the forum are now about AI given the sharp increase in AI-interested people (who do not necessarily have a past with EA, or altruism, as in giving etc). It does not make up for the fact that most people enter EA through 80k and get the feeling that they have to get into AI to be impactful, given the priorities. Or the fact that your chance to be coached by 80k is much greater if you want to work in longtermistic matters.
There is really a turning point in the movement, few actors are reacting against it, there is no real counter movement and most people in power do not speak up against this, even though they might have a more nuanced view on funding distribution than what is actually happening.
Maybe it will be one of these cases where the audience of one community changes completely, and thus becomes a different organization. It makes me very sad—there is no replacement to EA. No, global aid economics are not ‘GH’ in EA. No, animalistic parties cannot replace the work done by some EA orgs. It’s a question to all: will we silently abide and passively go along the movement, whatever it becomes, or will we just have to exit EA? The latter is already happening a lot.
This is true, and in our EA group, we are establishing an outreach model to attract them. So far here’s why they don’t get involved:
Mood at EA event is very young and excited, and connecting is harder for older people since they have different interests/lifestyles (not everyone can ‘optimize’ each step of their lives when they have kids and such). Communication norms are also different.
Career opportunities are much harder to find and grasp for experienced people: it’s not as easy to go three months do a fellowship somewhere and leave your family behind, or change countries to find the perfect job because there are few effective opportunities in your country. We’re improving that by working on a mapping of EA-likeminded institutions, but it’s nascent work, not that supported by 80k.
Many feel that their experience isn’t valued and appreciated by EA members, when it’s often a contest of who has read this and that but not so much learning from experienced members.
So yeah, as long as EA won’t have a clear strategy of cooperation with other institutions (for example, the UN is often discarded efficiency-wise, but no good research proves this!), and as long as behavioural norms won’t change, it”s going to be hard. We trying to reach a tipping point of 25% of experienced people for the mood to change, but it’s hard.