EA has made admirable efforts to reach populations that are underrepresented in the movement: busy mid-career professionals, people of faith, and people across a wide range of professions and academic disciplines.
Yet despite all these efforts, we are underserving our most neglected group, one that makes up 98–99% of all people on earth: neurotypicals (NTs). While we don’t have the data on hand, we think it’s safe to say that EA has a severe underrepresentation issue among the NT population.
The case for impact
The scale of the opportunity is significant. According to my research (Claude was a big help), the global NT population sits at approximately 8.04–8.12 billion people. This is, to my knowledge, the largest underrepresented group EA has ever identified.
A quick BOTEC
There are an estimated 10,000–30,000 highly engaged EAs globally. Let's be generous and assume 50% are NT. That gives us roughly 5,000–15,000 NT EAs today. Now consider: NTs make up 98–99% of the global population. If EA's NT representation matched the general population, EA should therefore be approximately 49 times larger than it is today. At the high end of current estimates, that's a movement of 1.47 million highly engaged EAs. I’m honestly shocked I’m the first one writing about this.
Beyond sheer numbers, NTs bring a distinct and complementary skill set to the EA ecosystem. Claude advises me that NTs tend to be unusually strong in exactly the roles EA most needs:
- Donor relations and fundraising
- Political and policy outreach
- Mainstream media and communications
- Organisational management and HR
- Fundraising infrastructure
Introducing Impactualize
To address this gap, we’ll be launching a new community-building organisation. We considered a range of names: Neurotypicals for Impact, High-Impact Neurotypical Outreach, The Academy for Ethical Initiative. We ultimately landed on something that feels more on-brand for the audience we’re trying to reach. Introducing: Impactualize.
Why are we qualified to lead this venture? We have a foot in both worlds, so to speak. Elliot likes making small talk, but only started talking at 3. An EA in Oxford once thought he must have been ‘cool in school’. This was both the most flattering and misguided thing he’s ever been told. Brad scored a 36 on the RAADS-R quotient, indicating he’s likely not autistic but has autistic traits. He also has a strong preference for his food to be mixed, which really cuts both ways.
Once our initial funding comes through, Impactualize will run three core programs.
Program 1: The Impactualize Fellowship
We will offer a six-week EA fellowship tailored specifically for NT participants. The structure follows the standard fellowship model, with key modifications, including:
- Venue. Sessions take place at a bar in your local city. Participants have the option of purchasing and consuming alcoholic beverages over the course of each session, as well as “kick-ons” where participants will head out to a local club for 1-6 hours.
- Facilitation. Facilitators will be NT, or where this is not possible, will have completed NT sensitivity training (see Program 3).
- Homework. We’ll pare down the 4-10 mandatory readings and 6 optional readings to a single weekly New Yorker profile of EA leaders. We’re also experimenting with ways of integrating the Artist Way’s morning pages, or some other personal reflective practice.
Program 2: A Neurotypical Space at EAG
EA Global currently offers quiet spaces for attendees who need a break from social stimulation. We think this is great. We also think there is an unmet need for a different kind of space for NTs who need a different kind of break from the intense, scheduled, back-to-back 1:1s that constitute the EAG social experience.
The NT Space will be a designated area at EAG events with the following features:
- No overhead lighting. All lighting set to 2700K or warmer, with no more than 500 lumens per lamp.
- Background music at a mildly intrusive volume. We found a great default, but people can DJ.
- Real plants.
- A strong norm of NT sensitivity. Conversation topics in this space are governed by the Impactualize Small Talk Guidelines (see Program 3).
We believe this space will serve as a model for what EA community spaces could look like if we optimised for the full range of human neurotypes, not just the ones that are already well-served by LED corn bulbs, whiteboard walls, and speed updating events.
Program 3: Neurotypicals Sensitivity Training
This training is designed for community builders, fellowship facilitators, and anyone else looking to be more inclusive. So far, our training covers:
- Small Talk. We cover the importance of meandering, low-stakes conversation as high-value phatic social infrastructure. Topics include:
- Approved opening questions: “how are you”, “what’s been going on?”, and “what’s good”.
- Prohibited opening questions in NT-sensitive spaces: “when is the last time you changed your mind,” “what are your timelines,” “what is your most controversial opinion”.
- Regional training, such as in the UK you can say “you alright” (pronounced right), where the appropriate response is to repeat the phrase back to them.
- Additional modules coming soon: We have plans to develop the following modules:
- Clothing (there’s a world beyond EAG merch and Uniqlo)
- Catering parties (Options besides hummus, chips and oreos)
- An event design factor weighted model that rates how NT friendly your event is.
We were worried about this one, as despite our proficient ability to connect with NTs, we’re not very online. Luckily we found this guy and realised EA has this sorted out already, and we can fill other gaps in the ecosystem. If you are the man in this video please contact us. We’d love to connect at a venue that serves alcohol.
In light of these new findings, it might be smart to reconsider the question of whether new EA parents should vaccinate their children?
From a risk-reward perspective it might be smart to create a supply side source of non-nt children? It is commonly known that vaccines cause autism and if we look at an observational study most neuro-divergent people in EA are vaccinated which I think is pretty clear evidence.
In fact according to the meta coordination forum talent survey we can see demand for neurotypical people roles go up over time and as a consequence I believe there is a strong economical demand for nts.
We can estimate an increase with 10% all cause mortality from not taking vaccines (scientific) and the counterfactual impact of being neurotypical on your ability to take on leadership and management roles naturally go up by around 30%. This is an increase in expected value of 1.17 which will make the EA community approximately 20% more effective. This is therefore one of the most counterfactually important interventions of our time.
P.S: We might want to do some authentic circling to figure out the true needs of nt people? We should probably also throw in some anonymous feedback surveys as well.