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 st… - Wei Dai

Yes, but I tend not to advertise too much that people should be less certain about their altruism, since it's hard to see how that could be good for me regardless of what my values are or ought to be. I make an exception of this for people who might be in a position to build <nowiki>[</nowiki>a friendly artificial intelligence<nowiki>]</nowiki>, since if they're too confident about altruism then they're likely to be too confident about many other philosophical problems, but even then I don't stress it too much.

<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>.

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 people, so I've instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like.