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 i