But still, there are some real places where danger is real, like the Bronx or scientology or organized crime or a walking across a freeway.
So, this may be a good way to approach the issue: loss to individual humans is, roughly speaking, finite. Thus, the correct approach to fear is to gauge risks by their chance of loss, and then discount if it's not fatal.
So, we should be much less worried by a 1e-6 risk than a 1e-4 risk, and a 1e-4 risk than a 1e-2 risk. If you are more scared by a 1e-6 risk than a 1e-2 risk, you're reasoning fallaciously.
Now, one might respond- "but wait! This 1e-6 risk is 1e5 times worse than the 1e-2 risk!". But that seems to fall into the traps of visibility bias and privileging the hypothesis. If you're considering a 1e-6 risk, have you worked out not just all the higher order risks, but also all of the lower order risks that might have higher order impact? And so when you have an idea like the one in question, which I would give a risk of 1e-20 for discussion's sake, and you consider it without also bringing into your calculus essentially every other risk possible, you're not doing it rigorously. And, of course, humans can't do that computation.
Now, the kicker here is that we're talking about fear. I might fear the loss of every person I know just as strongly as I fear the loss of every person that exists, but be willing to do more to prevent the loss of everyone that exists (because that loss is actually larger). Fear has psychological ramifications, not decision-theoretic ones. If this idea has 1e-20 chances of coming to pass, you can ignore it on a fear level, and if you aren't, then I'm willing to consider that evidence you need help coping with fear.
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.