I think it is true that it is very hard to beat the market. That can be true without the market being perfectly efficient. The way I see it is that the market is ultra competitive and full of very competent & very rational (not perfectly rational) individuals with a very high incentive to interpret facts correctly. So its not easy to beat the market. You have to be very knowledgeable, and invest very deeply in order to generate insights your competitors dont have. As another commenter mentioned, its not clear to me how economically sensible it is to make this kind of investment.

If you play chess against someone, and you discover a winning strategy, and you play it repeatedly, they'll eventually discover your strategy and be able to counter you. Your opponents in the market are adaptive in this same way, so trying to always stay ahead is very hard. Some funds find some way (which I am not privy to) to succeed at this, and people still make boat loads of money as professional traders or quants, so there is reason to believe it is possible.

The fact that it is possible to have a very successful career in finance as a quant or trader also seems to me like evidence the efficient market hypothesis (taken in its strongest form, that markets are perfectly efficient) is false.