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"Coastal elite" brings to mind often mostly white, politically progressive people from well-to-do backgrounds. Most EAs are white and liberal, and I know a lot of them have gone to elite colleges or top universities. Demographically, they're similar. There are aspects of EA characterized as elitist, but I can't think of much else that comes to mind that makes EA clearly the same as the "coastal elite" stereotype. At least, while people may have anecdotes, I can't think of any more data from the EA community that's directly relevant.
Almost entirely. EA in London is very much targeted at middle-class, cosmopolitan young people. The majority of people I meet at those events have incomes in the 70th to 100th percentiles for the UK, despite being very young. They're generally well-travelled and usually come from a middle-class background. AFAIK, they exclusively voted 'remain.' ... What are the other signals of being an elite? I can probably find them in EA London.
I'm a little surprised that this is a question. Do people not know this?
"elite" feels like a fuzzy-enough concept that I'd guess different people have pretty different models of it.
I'm just curious to hear more about what people think around this, given that it's come up a few times on the giant "EA jobs" thread.
Yeah, that makes sense. Most of the people I know wouldn't call themselves elite, but I still think it's broadly true of my EA friends, even though there are other, elite-er people out there.