I am an EA outsider, so despite my best attempts to research previous critiques of EA I am bound to repeat some of them. Some are repeated purposefully, either to give credence to the point or to share my own take on it. Whenever I have knowingly repeated a criticism, I have tried my best to cite others’ work as well.

I first heard of EA through 80,000 hours in 2016-17, when I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to have the most positive impact in my life. I was obsessed. Initially I wanted to become an acolyte, establish a local EA chapter and spread the knowledge. However, that feeling quickly waned, as I started realising the vast differences between the reality I came from, compared to that of people whose work I was consuming. They (read: 80,000 hours and EA contributors) were mostly coming from prestigious educational institutions in the western world - I was not even in university, and came from an entirely different cultural and socioeconomic context. I did not have access to the knowledge, finances, mechanisms of influence or the jobs that were mentioned in 80,000 hours and other EA forums. So after a couple of months of ‘infatuation’ (quite similar to how it is described here), during which I read most of what was available on the 80,000 hours website and contacted my local chapter of EA (one did exist, but no one responded), I felt disillusioned.

Since then I have had limited engagement with the EA community - I listened to a few episodes of the 80 000 podcast, read a few related posts and kept my eyes on the job board. The disillusionment led me to look for a ‘purposeful’ way of existing beyond EA’s chartered paths. However, through the pursuit of other goals and my genuine interests, I actually did end up in one of those prestigious western universities - one with an EA chapter - and later in an 'influential' job - i.e. a job that would appear on the 80,000 hours job board. I suppose this corroborates some EA ideas, but also illustrates that it is not the only way to get to positions where one can have a positive impact.

Since I do like the idea of EA as a question and I believe it could be of great value to humanity, when I recently ran into the red teaming competition, I wanted to try writing an ‘outsider’s critique’ - one that is not attacking, but truly aimed at improving the organisation (or maybe if one is more cynical - shaping it t...

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