Disclaimer: I'm very sorry if my quick thoughts and naive perspective derailed anywhere and hurt anyone's sentiments. Not intended to cause controversy.
I think it'd be great to inculcate something that Open Phil does with their undergraduate scholarships for internationals aspiring to study in US and UK universities, that is include the factor of "not residents/citizens of US and UK" in some way. I mean to say the present Atlas International could be redefined to cover most of the world including Central and West Africa, South America, India, China, etc, with say $20k scholarships. And instead of other subdivisions like Atlas India and Atlas China rather launch an Atlas+ for the US, Canada, UK, and remaining regions, with say $10k scholarships. This could help tackle the privilege thing you mentioned.
I think the privilege factor rightly comes in not only in terms of the rich students getting the scholarships but also in terms of who is having the opportunity of having an actually 'good education', which again falls in the aspect that certain schools and/or institutions which only certain students can afford to attend, get better writing and articulation skills. I'm saying this because though Atlas says it has a strict no-BS policy for answers to the questions of their applications, I firmly believe the answers need to be written, approached, formed, and framed in a certain way to even get the minimum attention/consideration while admissions review by the staff. I'm not saying faking or lying at all, just that you need to mold and present your answer and thoughts in a way that has to certainly incline with the thought processes of Atlas people that you gauge from their site and available information. And this is pretty similar to the Common App US colleges process. I'm an Atlas finalist as well as a rationality camp alum and didn't fake anything anywhere but this writing style thing/skill one has to implement which generally is better for students of elite schools.
With all these being said, I don't think Atlas should be discontinued though, like EA as a whole has flaws and improvements to be made in the community, Atlas too can surely grow and improve upon. And if $10M+ could be spent on PR for a book, certainly giving even $50k to 100 high school students each for their experimentation sounds good enough as it also might lead to some good results/nice outcomes.
Disclaimer: I'm very sorry if my quick thoughts and naive perspective derailed anywhere and hurt anyone's sentiments. Not intended to cause controversy.
I think it'd be great to inculcate something that Open Phil does with their undergraduate scholarships for internationals aspiring to study in US and UK universities, that is include the factor of "not residents/citizens of US and UK" in some way. I mean to say the present Atlas International could be redefined to cover most of the world including Central and West Africa, South America, India, China, etc, with say $20k scholarships. And instead of other subdivisions like Atlas India and Atlas China rather launch an Atlas+ for the US, Canada, UK, and remaining regions, with say $10k scholarships. This could help tackle the privilege thing you mentioned.
I think the privilege factor rightly comes in not only in terms of the rich students getting the scholarships but also in terms of who is having the opportunity of having an actually 'good education', which again falls in the aspect that certain schools and/or institutions which only certain students can afford to attend, get better writing and articulation skills. I'm saying this because though Atlas says it has a strict no-BS policy for answers to the questions of their applications, I firmly believe the answers need to be written, approached, formed, and framed in a certain way to even get the minimum attention/consideration while admissions review by the staff. I'm not saying faking or lying at all, just that you need to mold and present your answer and thoughts in a way that has to certainly incline with the thought processes of Atlas people that you gauge from their site and available information. And this is pretty similar to the Common App US colleges process. I'm an Atlas finalist as well as a rationality camp alum and didn't fake anything anywhere but this writing style thing/skill one has to implement which generally is better for students of elite schools.
With all these being said, I don't think Atlas should be discontinued though, like EA as a whole has flaws and improvements to be made in the community, Atlas too can surely grow and improve upon. And if $10M+ could be spent on PR for a book, certainly giving even $50k to 100 high school students each for their experimentation sounds good enough as it also might lead to some good results/nice outcomes.