Well, I pretty much told them I planned on spending all day surfing the Internet and playing video games until they stopped supporting me. [Eliezer] seemed to have a better excuse.

It may sound like a better excuse to people in this community, but I assure you that to my parents both "excuses" would have sounded one and the same:

"It's great that you want to work on 'artificial intelligence' or whatever when you grow up, but right now, young man, your schoolwork comes first. You're not going to sit around on the computer all day while you're living under our roof." (etc.)

I'm always jealous when I hear about mathematical prodigies who are doing advanced work at young ages. I would have been one of them if I only I had someone who was willing to teach me math more complicated than arithmetic!

I second this jealousy! Though in my case, I had the access to higher math (at least enough to get started). What I didn't have was anyone who cared about the rather remarkable fact that I was interested in it. I mean really, truly cared -- to the point of taking some kind of action. Whenever I did something that showed what might be called exceptional ability, whether it was learning calculus or writing symphonies, the reaction of my parents and the school authorities was always "that's great, but..."

(Incidentally, I don't want to unfairly condemn my parents. They would have been just fine for 99% of the children they might have had, and it could have been much worse for me. But never underestimate the stupidity of the U.S. public school system.)