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The biggest (long term) risk with emerging markets is that they don't ever "emerge", and they just sort of stay 3rd world, and often the most profitable companies in those countries are foreign multinationals.

Also for young people who have reasonable expectation to have a very solid well paying job for many years, you don't really need to worry about risk. When I was younger I would've been happy to put my money in the riskiest investments I could find if I knew they were more +EV.

Like "you need to be thinking of risk-adjusted return and not total return" is standard advice but it just isn't true. It depends on your goals and time frames. There is a curve of risk-EV. An optimal investment is somewhere on that curve, but it's totally up to the individual investor where they want to be on that curve. Investments off the curve are just dumb (lower return at the same risk, or higher risk at the same return).

The problem with putting everything in emerging markets is that you can be sure it's riskier than a broader fund, but you don't know it's more +EV.

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It's clear from your post that you don't understand the concept of risk-adjusted return. You can aim for a 500% return but you should still be focused on return per unit of risk. A focus on risk-adjusted return is not a prescription to focus on safe or conservative investments, but rather only to account for the element of risk in evaluating investment performance.