I know that lukeprog's comment is mostly replying to the insecurity about lack of credentials in the OP.  Still,  the most upvoted answer seems a bit ironic in the broader context of the question:

If you read the comment without knowing Luke, you might be like "Oh yeah, that sounds encouraging." Then you find out that he wrote this excellent 100++ page report on the neuroscience of consciousness, which is possibly the best resource on this on the internet, and you're like "Uff, I'm f***ed."

Luke is (tied with Brian Tomasik) the most genuinely modest person I know, so it makes sense that it seems to him like there's a big gap between him and even smarter people in the community. And there might be, maybe. But that only makes the whole situation even more intimidating.

It's a tough spot to be in and I only have advice that maybe helps make the situation tolerable, at least.

Related to the advice about Stoicism, I recommend viewing EA as a game with varying levels of difficulty. 

Because life isn’t fair, the level of difficulty of the video game will sometimes be “hard” or even “insane”, depending on the situation you’re in. The robot on the other hand would be playing on “easy”, because it would never encounter a lack of willpower, skills, or thinking capacity. So don’t worry about not being able to score too many points in the absolute sense, and focus instead on how many points are reachable within the difficulty-level that you’re playing on.

I also like the concrete advice in the post SHOW: A framework for shaping your talent for direct work, by Ryan Carey and Tegan McCaslin.

1. Get Skilled: Use non-EA opportunities to level up on those abilities EA needs most.

2. Get Humble: Amplify others’ impact from a more junior role.

3. Get Outside: Find things to do in EA’s blind spots, or outside EA organizations.

4. Get Weird: Find things no one is doing.

Of course, for some people, it may feel like the only useable advice is "Get Humble." However, I think at least "Get Skilled" is also advice that should always work, and people who feel discouraged about it may want to start working on developing a bit more of a growth mindset* and combine the search for useful skills with "Get Humble" (i.e., look for skills that are in reach). 

*There's no use in feeling bad about not having as much of a growth mindset as others, because that's also a trait that varies among people, just like intelligence. And a growth mindset most likely comes easier to highly intelligent people.

I think "Get Outside" can also work out well because altruistically motivated people who think carefully about the impact of their role are in rare supply outside of EA. However, there might be a problem where doing well in roles outside of EA isn't very compatible with the typical identity of going to EA Global and talking about cause priortization and so on. I think that's a tricky situation. Maybe it makes sense for EAs in this sort of situation to meet up, compare experiences, and see if they find ways of dealing with it better. 

I have the maximum amount of respect for anyone who is motivated to spend a large portion of their time and resources to do the most good they can, no matter what their personal situation turns out to be. Especially if people are honest with themselves about personal limitations. 

FWIW, I wouldn't say I'm "dumb," but I dropped out of a University of Minnesota counseling psychology undergrad degree and have spent my entire "EA" career (at MIRI then Open Phil) working with people who are mostly very likely smarter than I am, and definitely better-credentialed. And I see plenty of posts on EA-related forums that require background knowledge or quantitative ability that I don't have, and I mostly just skip those.

Sometimes this makes me insecure, but mostly I've been able to just keep repeating to myself something like "Whatever, I'm excited about this idea of helping others as much as possible, I'm able to contribute in various ways despite not being able to understand half of what Paul Christiano says, and other EAs are generally friendly to me."

A couple things that have been helpful to me: comparative advantage and stoic philosophy.

At some point it would also be cool if there was some kind of regular EA webzine that published only stuff suitable for a general audience, like The Economist or Scientific American but for EA topics.

I'm really sorry that you and so many others have this experience in the EA community. I don't have anything particularly helpful or insightful to say -- the way you're feeling is understandable, and it really sucks :(

I just wanted to say I'm flattered and grateful that you found some inspiration in that intro talk I gave. These days I'm working on pretty esoteric things, and can feel unmoored from the simple and powerful motivations which brought me here in the first place -- it's touching and encouraging to get some evidence that I've had a tangible impact on people.

I'm going to be boring/annoying here and say some things that I think are fairly likely to be correct but may be undersaid in the other comments:

• EAs on average are noticeably smarter than most of the general population
• Intelligence is an important component for doing good in the world.
• The EA community is also set up in a way that amplifies this, relative to much of how the rest of the world operates.
• Most people on average are reasonably well-calibrated about how smart they are.
  • (To be clear exceptions certainly exist) EDIT: This is false, see Max Daniel's comment.
• If you're less smart than average for EAs (or less driven, or less altruistic, or less hardworking, or have less of a social safety net), than on average I'd expect you to be less good at having a positive impact than others.
• But this is in relative terms, in absolute terms I think it's certainly possible to have a large impact still.
• Our community is not (currently) set up  well to accommodate the contributions of many people who don't check certain boxes, so I expect there to be more of an uphill battle for many such people.
  • I don't think this should dissuade you from the project of (effectively) doing good, but I understand and emphasize if this makes you frustrated.

The Parable of the Talents, especially the part starting at:

But I think the situation can also be somewhat rosier than that.

Ozy once told me that the law of comparative advantage was one of the most inspirational things they had ever read. This was sufficiently strange that I demanded an explanation.

Ozy said that it proves everyone can contribute. Even if you are worse than everyone else at everything, you can still participate in global trade and other people will pay you money. It may not be very much money, but it will be some, and it will be a measure of how your actions are making other people better off and they are grateful for your existence.

Might prove reassuring. Yes, EA has lots of very smart people, but those people exist in an ecosystem which almost everyone can contribute to. People do and should give kudos to those who do the object level work required to keep the attention of the geniuses on the parts of the problems which need them.

As some examples of helpful things available to you: 

• Being an extra pair of hands at events
• Asking someone who you think is aligned with your values and might have too much on their plate what you can help them with (if you actually have the bandwidth to follow through)
• Making yourself available to on-board newcomers to the ideas in 1-on-1 conversations

You seem to be jumping to the conclusion that if you don't understand something, it must be because you are dumb, and not because you lack familiarity with community jargon or norms. 

For example, take the yudkowsky doompost that's been much discussed recently. In the first couple of paragraphs, he namedrops people that would be completely unknown outside his specific subfield of work, and expects the reader to know who they are.  Then there are a lot of paragraphs like the following:

If nothing else, this kind of harebrained desperation drains off resources from those reality-abiding efforts that might try to do something on the subjectively apparent doomed mainline, and so position themselves better to take advantage of unexpected hope, which is what the surviving possible worlds mostly look like.

It doesn't matter if you have an oxford degree or not, this will be confusing to anyone who has not been steeped in the jargon and worldview of the rationalist subculture. (My PHD in physics is not helpful at all here)

This isn't necessarily bad writing, because the piece is deliberately targeted at  people who have been talking with this jargon for years. It would be bad writing if it were aimed at the general public though, because they don't know what these terms mean.  

This is similar to scientific fields, when you publish a scientific paper in a specific sub-discipline, a lot of knowledge is assumed. This avoids having to re-explain whole disciplines, but it does make papers incredibly hard to read for anyone that's even a little bit of an outsider. But when communicating results to the public (or even someone in a different field of physics), you have to translate into reasonably understandable english. I think people here should be mindful of who exactly their audience is, and tailor their language appropriately. 

On fancy credentials: most EAs didn't go to fancy universities*. And I guess that 4% of EAs dropped out entirely. Just the publicly known subset includes some of the most accomplished: Yudkowsky, Muehlhauser, Shlegeris?, Kelsey Piper, Nuno Sempere. (I know 5 others I admire greatly.) 

On intelligence: You might be over-indexing to research, and to highly technical research. Inside research / writing the peak difficulty is indeed really high, but the average forum post seems manageable. You don't need to understand stuff like Löb's theorem to do great work. I presume most great EAs don't understand formal results of this sort. I often feel dumb when following alignment research, but I can sure do ordinary science and data analysis and people management, and this counts for a lot.

On the optics of the above two things: seems like we could do more to make people feel welcome, and to appreciate the encouraging demographics and the world's huge need for sympathetic people who know their comparative advantage. (I wanted to solve the education misconception by interviewing great dropouts in EA. But it probably would have landed better with named high-status interviewees.)

* Link is only suggestive evidence cos I don't have the row-level data.

To supplement what others have said, I think the long term (few years or more) outcomes of the movement depend greatly of on the diversity of perspectives we manage to have available. Mathematicians and engineers are great for solving some complex problems (ok, I'm biased because I am one), but the current lack of e.g. sociologists in EA is going to hinder any efforts to solve big problems that exist in a social environment. Not only do you have a place here - it's necessary that people like you be part of EA.

Another issue here is that the EA Forum is used sort of as the EA research journal by many EAs and EA orgs, including my employer, Rethink Priorities. We sometimes post write-ups here that aren't optimized for the average EA to read at all, but are more for a technical discipline within EA.

Since sociology is probably an underrepresented degree in effective altruism, maybe you can consider it a comparative advantage rather than "the wrong degree". The way I see it, EA could use a lot more sociological inquiry.

Feel a bit sad reading this. I'm sorry you've felt alienated by EA and are unsure about how you fit in.

Re: your last sentence: you're far from alone in feeling this way. I cannot recommend Luisa Rodriguez's  80000 Hours article about imposter syndrome highly enough.

I don't think super high intelligence, or Ivy league degrees, are a requirement for engaging with EA. But setting aside that question, I do think there are lots of ways to engage that aren't, like, "do complicated AI alignment math". Organizations need many people and skills other than researchers to run well. And I think there are many ways to express EA values outside of your career, e.g. by donating, voting for political candidates who focus on important issues, and leading by example in your personal life and relationships.

This is such a good post + I agree so much! I'm sorry you feel like you don't fit in :( and I'm also worried about the alienating effect EA can have on people. Fwiw, I've also had worries like this in the past - not so much that I wasn't smart enough, but that there wasn't a place for me in EA because I didn't have a research background in any of the major cause areas (happy to DM about this). 

 A couple of points, some echoing what others have said:

-there's a difference between 'smart' and 'has fancy credentials'
-some stuff that's posted on the Forum is written for a niche audience of experts and is incomprehensible to pretty much everyone
-imo a lot of EA stuff is written in an unnecessarily complicated/maths-y/technical way (and the actual ideas are less complicated than they seem)
-maybe you have strengths other than "intellectual" intelligence, e.g. emotional intelligence, people skills, being organized, conscientiousness...

I really do think this is a problem with EA, not with you - EAs should offer more resources to people who are excited to contribute but don't fit into the extremely narrow demographic of nerdy booksmart STEM graduates. 

I'd change the title of this post to "EA for non-geniuses".

Someone around 100-120 IQ isn't dumb, but actually still above avr!

And yet, this is a great contribution to EA discourse, and it's one that a "smart" EA couldn't have made.

You have identified a place where EA is failing a lot of people by being alienating. Smart people often jump over hurdles and arrive at the "right" answer without even noticing them. These hurdles have valuable information. If you can get good at honestly communicating what you're struggling with, then there's a comfy niche in EA for you.

Aside, which I’m adding after having written the rest of the comment: I think most EAs would agree that intelligence isn’t a moral virtue. Nonetheless, I think there can be a tendency in EA to praise intelligence (and its signals) in a way that borders on or insinuates moralization.

In a more just world, being called “unintelligent” or even “stupid” wouldn’t seem much different than being called “unattractive,” and being called smart or even “brilliant” wouldn’t leave anyone gushing with pride. 

Nice post. I started writing a comment that turned into a couple pages, which I hope will become a post along the lines of:

• No really, what about 'dumb' EAs? Have there been any attempts to really answer this question?
  • There seems to be a consensus among smart, well-connected EAs that impact is heavy-tailed, so everyone but the top 0.1-10% (of people who call themselves EA!) or something is a rounding error.
    • I think this is largely true from the perspective of a hiring committee who can fill one role
      • But the standard qualitative interpretation might break down when there is a large space of possible roles.
  • I know this isn't at all an original point and I'm sure there are better write ups elsewhere, but one thing my brain keeps coming back to is that “2*15=30.”
    • A more appropriate model/question might be: “what is n such that 1.1^n=100^7?”
      • I didn’t know what the answer was when writing it down, and didn’t have much of a guess. Exponentials are almost never intuitive, so my type-I brain I wouldn’t have been surprised to see “n=19.43” or “n=6.2*10^14” pop up.
      • The real answer is n$\approx$338.
      • The implication here (very tentatively, I haven’t thought much about this) is that finding (and putting to work) 338 people who are 1.1xs is just as good and important as finding seven 100xs.
        • I think (once again, tentatively) that this literal equation might be a not-terrible model of the actual situation.
        • From the perspective of EA as a whole, the right response to a heavy tailed distribution might be to enthusiastically find and make good use of as many 1.1xs as we can!
        • I tentatively think the magnitude 1.1 is justifiably as high as it is because both:
          • (1) there is probably a range of IQ (maybe like 110-130)? that is sufficient to have a decent-good grasp of EA concepts and yet not sufficient to push the cutting edge of intellectual work.
          • (2) This means that you can’t buy this labor on the market, since the macroeconomy hasn’t yet adjusted to the existence of EA megadonors!
            • In theory with an ‘infinite EA money printer’, we’d eventually see education+industry trying to crank out people who can do the types of jobs I’m imagining from market incentives alone! I don’t think this is going to happen any time soon.
  • In economics it's pretty important (and I'm pretty sure empirically true quite often) that low and high skilled labor can be compliments. That is, increasing the marginal product of low skilled labor causally increases the MP of high skilled labor.
    • Worth noting though that the actual macroeconomy isn’t a great model for EA because a big chunk of the labor market is low-skilled, whereas in EA it is not.

A final point: I am virtually certain that most people reading this who haven’t looked at some relevant statistics recently are overestimating the abilities of the average person or person of any nationality. As just one stat I quickly came across, “according to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.” 

• I’m mostly saying this to emphasize that there is a real zone of people like Olivia who can be described as not merely “smarter than average” and “dumber than average in EA” but “way smarter than average, capable of doing useful cognitive work, capable of understanding core EA ideas, and also “dumber than the average EA.”
  • I think at least some more work can and should go to figuring out what a person who falls in this category should do.
• I’m also saying to tell (as far as I have read) literally every single person commenting of the “i’M nOt tHat SmarT I dIdN'T gO tO aN iVy LeAgUe CoLlEgE” are wrong, and it’s worth noting that no standard signal of intelligence suffices to get a person accepted to any top 10 US school.
  • The chart below is of applicants to Stanford from my (public) high school.
    • Note that a weighted GPA of 5 would indicate that a person took exclusively AP classes during high school, which isn’t possible because of mandatory non-APs like P.E. and health.

Well, looks like “I started writing a comment but... ” comment has itself metastasized 🙃

Thank you for writing this up and putting it out there (coming from a non-fancy background I can totally relate!). 

One of the best things for my mental health this year was realising and allowing myself to accept that I am not and never will be a top researcher/EA thinker/ the person with the most accurate AI timelines/.... 

However, I do have an ops background and can see that my work is valuable, and there is no need for me to be the smartest in the room, as long as I get stuff done. 

I'd guess there are small things everyone can contribute (even just being a friendly face at an event and talking to new people can be really valuable). 

Additionally, I wish we had some more socialiogical studies about the EA community (posts like this one by Julia Wise).

Hi Olivia! As a former teacher with a degree in Education from a very low-ranking German university, I understand how you feel. I've been there! I am 100% confident there is an impactful way you can contribute to the EA community. Please reach out to me if you'd like to chat about those options, talk through potential career moves or volunteering opportunities!

P. S. : Your post has inspired me to finally create an account here and start commenting and posting - who knows what impact you have created down the line... ;-)

I definitely felt dumb when I first encountered EA . Certain kinds of intelligence are particularly overrepresented and valorized in EA (e.g. quantitative/rational/analytical intelligence) and those are the kinds I've always felt weakest in (e.g. I failed high school physics, stopped taking math as quickly as I could). When I first started out working in EA I felt a lot of panic about being found out for being secretly dumb because I couldn't keep up with discussions that leaned on those kinds of intelligence. I feel a lot better about this now, though it still haunts me sometimes.

What's changed since then?

1. I still make dumb math mistakes when I'm required to do math in my current role - but I've found that I have other kinds of intelligence some of the colleagues I initially felt intimidated by are less strong in (i.e. judgment, emotional intelligence, intuitions about people) and even though these can be easily dismissed/considered 'fluffy' they actually do and have mattered in concrete ways.
2. I've come to realize that intelligence isn't useful to consider as a monolithic category -- most things can be decomposed into a bunch of specific skills, and ~anyone can get better at really specific skills if they decide it's important enough and ask for help. The reason I've kept making dumb mistakes is mostly due to a learned helplessness I developed over years of failing at certain classes in school. This caused me to develop an identity around being hopeless along those dimensions, but this really isn't the same as being "dumb" and I wish I'd recognized this sooner and just tried to solve a few key gaps in my knowledge that I felt embarrassed by.
3. Spending a lot of time in EA social circles can make you feel like people have value in proportion to how smart they are (again, smart in very specific ways) and people often seem to treat intelligence as a proxy for ability to have impact. But looking back at history the track record of highly intelligent people is a pretty mixed bag (smart people are also responsible for breakthroughs that create terrible threats!), and other character traits have also mattered a lot for doing a lot of good (e.g. work ethic, courage, moral fortitude). It feels good to remind myself that e.g. Stanislav Petrov or Vasili Arkhipov seem like they were pretty average people intelligence-wise; it didn't stop them from preventing nuclear wars, so why should being bad at math lower my level of ambition about how much good I can do?
4. Another thing that's helped is just having a sense of humor about feeling dumb. I used to feel a lot of shame about asking 'dumb' sounding questions and thus giving myself away as a dumb person in both work and social contexts. This caused a lot of anxiety and meant I was pretty nervous and serious most of the time. Over time I learned that if I asked my real questions in a lighthearted way/lightened up around discussions of stuff I didn't understand people took it well and I enjoyed the interactions more.
5. I've also realized over time how much the desire to be perceived as smart shapes EA group dynamics. This leads to a) more people doing what I described above (not asking questions or wanting to reveal they don't understand, causing you to feel alone in this feeling), b) talking or writing in unnecessarily complex or erudite ways in order to signal that they're part of the in group. Becoming aware of these dynamics helped me to start opting out of them/trying to intentionally violate these scripts more often.
   
   I hope this is at least somewhat helpful -- I'm sorry you're feeling this way and I can definitely assure you you're not alone (and I really hope you don't leave EA for this reason)!.

First of all, thank you for speaking up about this. I know very smart people that are scared to just share their perspective on things and I do think THAT is very dumb.

Secondly, I do think donating some money regularly and cost-effectively is a safe bet, and freaking yourself out about "doing more" or even "the most" can easily be counterproductive. Just e.g. focusing on doing advocacy and explaining why evidence-based and cost-effective donations are good choices is still neglected in basically every country. There are many such relatively easy tasks that are great leverage points and in the end, it is precisely about comparative advantage. By you taking up such tasks you shoulder some burdens that are of relatively lower value to others.

Then for objectively difficult problems to solve it is, of course, reasonable to not try to make it "inclusive", there is a reason why there is a minimum height to become a soldier because the task environment will not change to accommodate certain people. I understand that you understand this. And by understanding this and e.g. not attempting something grandiose that ends up harmful, you are counterfactually already winning.

Then I also do think that "higher" intellectual ability and related work are not necessarily higher utility. There isn't one best or optimal thing everyone should be doing. The more one reads about complexity and systems science it is quite clear that there is no one optimal thing to do. It also shows that localism (serving one's direct community) e.g. is better than often portrayed in EA. Creatively and pragmatically solving problems you perceive directly around you is fantastic and your interest in EA suggests that might be better suited to doing so than others around you.

In general, you can be and become a virtuous person independently of your raw processing powers or academic credentials, and action on all possible levels is needed. 

Pre-Warning: Please don't read any of this as a criticism of those people who fit into the super-intelligent,  hard degrees at Oxford etc.  If you're that person, you're awesome, not critical of you, and this comment is directed at exploring the strengths of other paths :) 

Tl;dr at bottom of post for the time-constrained :)

This was a really interesting post to read. I wrote a slightly controversial piece a little while back that highlighted that 'top' Universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford have a lot of class and wealth restrictions so that instead of marketing to the 'most intelligent' in society, EA was frequently marketing to the 'intelligent, but wealthy' instead - and missing out most of the intelligent but economically stranded people who went to universities lower down on the rankings because it made more financial sense. It ended up spreading on Twitter a bit. Most people were interested and engaged, one or two got a bit angry (largely by misinterpreting what I said but that's likely on me as the writer, hence the pre-warning), that's life. But I would like to highlight that to you - I know a ton of really, really intelligent people who went to average universities. In fact of the five smartest and most impactful people I know, only 1 went to an elite-tier uni. So don't feel bad for going to a 'normal' uni. Loads of us did. And we're doing great.

As for being smart, I think it's easy to forget that science, law, engineering etc aren't just labwork/fieldwork. I've seen loads of people who are fantastic in labs and in research who produce really excellent research which doesn't go anywhere. Why? Because that's stage 1. Research results need highlighted, need shown to people who can take action, and need put into practice in order to be impactful. This can sometimes happen by accident, but science communications (and communications in general) are actually really complex. In short, a lot of the time these 'super intelligent' people you're intimidated by are actually like Narrow AI - fantastic at one thing, but fall apart elsewhere. This is why research frequently requires teams. Chances are by virtue of your own life path you might be fantastic at helping these researchers translate their research to be understood, and maybe great at getting it to where it needs to be. Research is a long process.

An advantage you have of your 'normal' life is that you will have learned a lot of skills others might not have. This isn't dunking on people from other walks of life - they are as blameless for their life lottery as we are, but what I'm saying is that each person's journey has taught them different skills.

An example from my own story entering EA is that I used to feel similar to you. I grew up on council estates to a completely non-academic family, many of my immediate family went into petty crime, and when I entered academia I felt like an outsider. I actually only started uni at 24 years old because I always felt that uni wasn’t for people like me - until I got a menial job in a STEM field and the scientists there told me otherwise. I actually met my EA group co-founder here and he was the same as me, both of us with very visible tattoos and strong regional accents standing out quite a bit among our peers. Often treated as stupid, or lesser, via a lot of (what is now called) microaggressions. Lots of doors slammed in faces. This was sometimes the same feeling in EA, but to a much lesser extent since the community is very welcoming. Seriously, the community here is lovely and all of the social/class barriers it faces are accidental and they try really hard to correct them. At least in my experience.  But humans gonna hume.

When I notice the difference of background personally is in little things like spending money. In my EA group I'll negotiate almost every transaction to scrape (sometimes literally) pennies in savings because that's how I grew up, whereas I've noticed that a lot of the time other EA group leaders will just pay full price for stuff. That always blows me away. Like they’ll contact a company, ask for a price, then just…pay it. That brings tears to my eyes! But a lot of people have lived their whole life not having to scrape pennies so they don’t even know it’s possible to do this. So this odd little thing in my past that makes me different to a lot of EAs I meet actually helps the EA community by saving money for redeployment. I found a way to make my difference/insecurity my strength.

As an example I just got £800 in funding to buy 40 things at £20 each for my group, but instead of ordering online I contacted the company and negotiated a bulk order discount with their sales department, which meant that some money could go back to EA and be better deployed elsewhere. It's a small example, but it shows that nothing occurs in isolation and there are a lot of valuable skills in EA. I often joke that EA funds could triple their impact by forgetting financial advisors and putting someone on Universal Credit in charge of their money! Emphasis on joke :)  But it shows that just because you're not in the position or desire to be applying to research fellowships that EA isn't for you. You might be a wizard at events organising, grant applications, etc.

Another thing you need to bear in mind, which links back to what I said about teams, is that a lot of this debate/research on forums is both hyper-specialised and theoretical. You’re not going to understand an extremely niche computer science conversation, or ethics conversation, and it’s unlikely that anyone on the forums understands everything. This is not your fault, and it’s actually one of EA communities other (very few) flaws. Their public comms is pretty bad. They have real difficulties interpreting their ideas, theories, and research into something that is understandable and digestible. EA orgs are generally much better at it than forum posters, but it's still an issue. That’s not on you, that’s a research skill that’s learned over time but that people in very theoretical and isolated environments tend not to learn it. I actually worked as a science communicator once where my job was to translate STEM  research into something the public could understand. It’s harder than you think, and something I think should be offered as a training course to EA researchers and groups. Good idea for any EA course-makers out there!

Granted, as you said sometimes these debates need complexity because the ideas are complex. That’s fair, and often very necessary. But if you don’t understand a post directed at the whole community it’s not because you’re dumb, it’s because the poster doesn’t understand how to present research to an interdisciplinary audience. I was the same until I worked that job, and even now I work in the legal field surrounding AI so I constantly struggle to explain law concepts to software engineers and software engineering concepts to lawyers. It’s tough, and to be honest I struggle to understand really complex ideas from both sometimes. At least once a week I send a STEM or law paper to a colleague and ask them to explain it like I’m a 5 year old. There’s no shame in it, because they do the same to me!

As a final reminder - though 99% of the EA community are great, there are inevitably (like in all human communities) that 1% who think they are far more intelligent than average, and wondergods in their field, and that EA is for people like them and not their underlings. I haven't met one in real-life yet, but I've seen one or two in comments sections over the years. Bear in mind that 1) They're often very wrong about that and lack self-awareness, and 2) I currently cooperate with a lot of government bodies in deciding policy relating to AI and those types of people have their research cast aside a lot of the time due to a lack of social skills, a misunderstanding of policy norms, and a lack of experience outside of their field. If you ever bump into someone like that, who tells you that their impact is greater than yours, don't listen. Because they're probably in for a big shock when they find out how much teamwork is required to reach the impact finish line and how hard it is to build a team with that attitude!

On that note, don't put yourself down as a sociologist. I just co-published a paper in the AI field and 2 of the authors are sociologists. Sociology is vital in areas such as governance and policy across AI, animal welfare, poverty, etc. Don't put your field down because it doesn't have graphs and algebra. Your field is what turns those things into actual, measurable actions that can work. There's also no such thing as an 'easy' degree.
 

TL;DR

You’re not dumb at all, sometimes EA is just poor at public/interdisciplinary communication both externally and internally.  Additionally, social barriers which EA struggles with sometimes can cause accidental alienation but rest assured you’re not alone, in fact everyone in this community probably feels like that sometimes. We deal with extremely difficult concepts across literally dozens of disciplines in areas of knowledge we’re only beginning to explore. Anyone who is thinking ‘wtf is going on’ at least once or twice a day isn’t paying attention. You'll meet the odd person who likes to show how much smarter they are than everyone else, but no-one wants to work with them and their careers end up dying.

Please feel free, and this counts for anyone reading this as well as OP, to reach out to me on the forums or via email if you ever feel like this. I’m always happy to chat with other EA members, as someone who has faced these feelings before, and will happily do what I can to open doors for you. :)

 

This resonates a lot with me. I actually studied physics at a pretty good college and did very well in all my physics classes, but I was depressed for a long time (two years?) [ETA: more like two and a half] for not feeling smart enough to be part of the EA community. 

I’m feeling better now, though that’s unfortunately because I stopped trying so hard to fit in. I stopped trying (and failing) to get into EAGs or get hired at EA orgs, and haven’t been reading the EA Forum as much as I used to. I still… have longtermist EA values, but I have no idea of what someone like me can do to help the future go well. Even donating part of my income seems approximately useless, given how longtermism is far from funding-constrained.

Something I wrote a little while back regarding whether EA should be a "narrow movement of people making significant impact, or a much broader one of shallower impact":

I've sometimes wondered whether it would be good for there to be a distinct brand and movement for less hardcore EA, that is less concerned with prestige, less elitist, more relaxed, and with more mainstream appeal. Perhaps it could be thought of as the Championship to EA's Premier League. I think there are already examples, e.g. Probably Good (alternative to 80,000 Hours), TLYCS and OFTW (alternatives to GWWC), and the different tiers of EA investing groups (rough and ready vs careful and considered). Places where you feel comfortable only spending 5 minutes editing a post, rather than agonising about it for hours; where you feel less pressure to compete with the best in the world; where you are less prone to analysis paralysis or perfect being the enemy of the good; where there is less stress, burnout and alienation; where ultimately the area under the impact curve could be comparable, or even bigger..? Perhaps one of the names mentioned here could be used.