“Most smart and skilled people are outside of the EA/rationalist community: an analysis” by titotal

This is a link post.

Introduction:

The (highly interrelated) effective altruist and Rationalist communities are very small on a global scale. Therefore, in general, most intelligence, skill and expertise is outside of the community, not within it.

I don’t think many people will disagree with this statement. But sometimes it's worth reminding people of the obvious, and also it is worth quantifying and visualizing the obvious, to get a proper feel for the scale of the difference. I think some people are acting like they have absorbed this point, and some people definitely are not.

In this post, I will try and estimate the size of these communities. I will compare how many smart people are in the community vs outside the community. I will do the same for people in a few professions, and then I will go into controversial mode and try and give some advice that I [...]

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First published:
July 12th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Bz4McBt62p63Zkjzb/most-smart-and-skilled-people-are-outside-of-the-ea

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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