Thank you. Contempt was not intended (or felt), I'll try keeping this possible impression in mind to figure out where I should tune down the way I talk to communicate emotion more accurately.
I often observe that the one state of mind that leads me to sloppy thinking is that of contempt.
Yes, it's fascinating for me how severely reasoning can be distorted by strong emotions, but generally I feel (social) emotions more rarely than other people. When that happens, I identify motivated thoughts by dozens, and have impaired ability to think clearly. I wish there was a reproducible way of inducing such emotional experience to experiment more with those states of mind.
Contempt is also the signal you were laying on thickly in your comments here and thinking displayed therein was commensurably shoddy. Not in the sense that they were internally inconsistent but in as much as they didn't relate at all well with the comments that you were presuming to reply to.
I don't believe that it's the cause. I'm generally bad at guessing what people mean, I often need being told explicitly. I don't believe it's the case with David Gerard's comments in this thread though (do you disagree?). I believe it was more the case with waitingforgodel's comments today.
I wouldn't normally make such critiques but rhetorically or not you asked for one and this is a sincere reply.
I appreciate such critiques, so at least my nonexistent disapproval of them shouldn't be a reason for making them more rarely.
I don't believe that it's the cause. I'm generally bad at guessing what people mean, I often need being told explicitly. I don't believe it's the case with David Gerard's comments in this thread though (do you disagree?). I believe it was more the case with waitingforgodel's comments today.
Much less so with David. David also expressed himself more clearly - or perhaps instead in a more compatible idiom.
I wish there was a reproducible way of inducing such emotional experience to experiment more with those states of mind.
While such things are never going to be perfectly tailored for the desired effect MDMA invokes a related state. :)
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:
Some disadvantages:
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.