I don't like playing politics, I don't like having bosses and being told what to do, I don't like competition, I have no desire to manage other peopl… - Wei Dai

<nowiki>[</nowiki>By the way<nowiki>]</nowiki>, since you are advising high school students and undergrads, I suggest that you mention to them that they can start being independent researchers before they graduate from college. For example I came up with my b-money idea (a precursor to Bitcoin) as an undergrad, and was also already thinking about some of the questions that would eventually lead to <nowiki>[</nowiki>updateless decision theory<nowiki>]</nowiki>.

Part of it, which perhaps you and most other observers are not aware, is that I have enough passive income, and enough dispassion for conventional status signaling, that my marginal utility of money is pretty low compared to my disutility for doing busywork. To put it in perspective, I quit my last regular job in 2002, and stopped doing consulting for that company as well (at $100/hour) a year later when they merged with Microsoft and told me I had to do a bunch of paperwork and be hired by Microsoft's "independent consulting company" in order to continue.

Does anyone not have any problems with taking ideas seriously? I think I'm in this category because ideas like cryonics, the Singularity, <nowiki>[</nowiki>unfriendly artificial intelligence<nowiki>]</nowiki>, and Tegmark's mathematical universe were all immediately obvious to me as ideas to take seriously, and I did so without much conscious effort or deliberation.