Ideally, I'd like to save the world. One way to do that involves contributing academic research, which raises the question of what's the most effective way of doing that.
The traditional wisdom says if you want to do research, you should get a job in a university. But for the most part the system seems to be set up so that you first spend a long time working for someone else and research their ideas, after which you can lead your own group, but then most of your time will be spent on applying for grants and other administrative trivia rather than actually researching the interesting stuff. Also, in Finland at least, all professors need to also spend time doing teaching, so that's another time sink.
I suspect I would have more time to actually dedicate on research, and I could get doing it quicker, if I took a part-time job and did the research in my spare time. E.g. the recommended rates for a freelance journalist in Finland would allow me to spend a week each month doing work and three weeks doing research, of course assuming that I can pull off the freelance journalism part.
What (dis)advantages does this have compared to the traditional model?
Some advantages:
- Can spend more time on actual research.
- A lot more freedom with regard to what kind of research one can pursue.
- Cleaner mental separation between money-earning job and research time (less frustration about "I could be doing research now, instead of spending time on this stupid administrative thing").
- Easier to take time off from research if feeling stressed out.
Some disadvantages:
- Harder to network effectively.
- Need to get around journal paywalls somehow.
- Journals might be biased against freelance researchers.
- Easier to take time off from research if feeling lazy.
- Harder to combat akrasia.
- It might actually be better to spend some time doing research under others before doing it on your own.
EDIT: Note that while I certainly do appreciate comments specific to my situation, I posted this over at LW and not Discussion because I was hoping the discussion would also be useful for others who might be considering an academic path. So feel free to also provide commentary that's US-specific, say.
Of course. Whenever someone says they want to do something impossibly hard, the proper response is to dismiss them. Either they agree with you, and you made the right call, or they disagree with you, and you've cemented their resolve.
But JoshuaZ is right that I think the wording is ridiculous. "Save the world" is nothing but applause lights. If it were "see a positive singularity" we would have at least gone from 0th order to 1st order. If it were "make life extension available sooner" we've progressed from 1st order to 2nd order. If it were "make lab-grown organs available sooner" we've progressed from 2nd order to 3rd order. If one comes to me with the last desire, I'd tell them to move to Wake Forest and become friends with Anthony Atala. If someone comes to me with the first desire, I pat them on the head.
Even Norman Borlaug didn't "save the world." He might have personally extended lifespans by billions of human-years, but that's not close, even on a log scale. And if you want to be a second Norman Borlaug, trying to save the world seems like a poor way to approach that goal because you focus on the wrong questions. Borlaug wanted to improve the world- to make hungry people full by creating wheat varieties that were disease-resistant. He had the altruistic impulse, but he was facing a problem worked out to third order. The altruistic impulse is a great thing, but if you don't have a third order problem yet keep looking.
And when asking for career advice, it's relevant information where you are in that process. If you're at 2nd order, your interests will already be narrow enough that most advice will be inapplicable to your situation. The 2nd order person in the particular track I've outlined already knows they will strongly benefit from getting a medical degree in America, England, or China (there may be a few other countries on this list; this isn't my specialty) or that they should earn a bunch of money while getting familiar with efforts already underway in those countries. If you're at 3rd order, you're already at the point where there are a handful of appropriate opportunities, and you're better off looking for those opportunities specifically than you are getting generic advice.
If you're at 0th order? Then you need to spend time cultivating your interests. If you go to Silicon Valley and your only interest is "I want to get rich!" you won't get very far. While that may be the underlying interest of everyone there, the fact that it's so common means that it conveys very little information. The way for an individual to tackle a 0th order problem is to find a 3rd order problem, uncover some 4th order problems while investigating that problem, and solve those.
EDIT: I fleshed this out further is this post.
You're reading way too much into that single line. I wanted to express the sentiment of "I want to be as effective as possible in doing good", and there was a recent post covering that topic which happened to be named "how to save the world", so I linked to it. If that post hadn't been there, I might have said something like "I want to do something meaningful with my life". I was also assuming "saving ... (read more)