I suggest you write to Athena Andreadis at Harvard, ask her what's missing from the SENS Foundation's "seven research themes", and try to fill the gap.
Have you looked at the stuff SENS foundation is doing, and tried to figure out if any of it is close to what you're studying?
Their Academic Initiative especially seems aimed at people in your circumstances.
I recommend cryobiology research for consideration, if that's something that interests you. Achieving reversible cryopreservation (particularly of the brain) seems like a more modest near-term goal than developing a method of reversing aging.
I'm in a similar situation (chemistry pre-med student). Personally, I'm interested in nanotech because that field is new, and requires researchers who are inventing the way forward. That appeals to me; I think it sounds fun, plus it's an important field for immortality. I don't have a lot of connections to that field though, although it's definitely something I'm looking into for graduate work.
Additionally, diseases like Alzheimer's are serious obstacles to immortality, and are really and truly horrible. Two of my grandparents are information-theoreticall...
The best way for you to advance research on immortality is to earn as high a salary as possible and donate money to people doing immortality research.
I think this statement hold truer for individuals whose competitive advantage is best suited for a high salary career. It seems the OP is inclined towards science, so it makes sense to go into a scientific field, again one that plays to the individual's competitive advantage. I personally wouldn't know what to suggest, though. Porter's idea looks good, assuming there is a noticeable gap in SENS' research that they aren't actively trying to fill. As a Junior in High School, I've actually been thinking about this quite a bit, and I would also like to go into life extension or cryonics work.
If your passion is science, if at a gut level you believe that's where you can make the best contribution, do that. Making real money takes a hell of a lot of drive; it's not something that's at all likely to be accomplished by following the steps because you've been intellectually persuaded it's the course of highest utility.
The same is true in reverse, of course; if your passion is to start your own company, do that and donate money to immortality research.
In other words, don't try to choose in the abstract the career of highest utility. Choose from among those careers with high utility, that one where you have comparative advantage; and listen to your gut about where your comparative advantage lies.
The best ways to earn a high salary are to go into finance, law or to start your own business.
You should be careful to properly measure the marginal intellectual contribution you can make to a field. Think what would happen if the organization you would work for hired the next best candidate. Your marginal contribution is the difference between what you would do and what this second best candidate would do. You need to take into account that anyone who ends up paying you to conduct immortality research would likely have paid someone else to do it if you weren't around. In contrast, if you end up donating money to an organization that does immortality research then there isn't any other money this organization loses because they end up getting your funds.
and technology was our savior
Easy there. Risk from technology constitutes the greatest long-term problem we have right now. It's not at all clear that the benefits outweigh this problem.
False dichotomy. If a flood is about to destroy your village, total absence of water that would make everyone die of thirst is not the only alternative, and imagining this alternative shouldn't make you "enthusiastic about water" when there's that flood to divert. Don't think about technology as a package deal, that obscures the specifics.
I was under the impression that even if SENS research is successful, it won't be immortality that we achieve, but "only" much longer life spans. True immortality wouldn't be possible without WBE.
I think this account of marginal contribution is wrong. Here's a handwavy model to explain why.
Suppose there are N people in the world working on X, and you're the Mth best. And suppose (laughably) that every organization doing X hires exactly one person, the best person it can get. And (also laughably) that everyone works for the best organization they can, and that that's the one doing the most valuable work in X. Write A(n) for the importance of the nth-best organization's work and B(n) for the quality of the nth-best person's work.
OK. So the total utility we get is the sum of A(n) B(n). Now, suppose you weren't there. The organization employing you gets the next-best person instead, and then the next-best organization gets the next-next-best, etc. In other words, instead of A(1)B(1) + A(2)B(2) + ... + A(N)B(N) we get A(1)B(1) + ... + A(M-1)B(M-1) + A(M)B(M+1) + A(M+1)B(M+2) + etc. The total utility loss is therefore A(M)(B(M)-B(M+1)) + A(M+1)(B(M+1)-B(M+2)) + etc. The first term here is what James_Miller describes, but there are all the others too.
(Another way for the scenario to play out: Everyone's already employed; then you drop out and your employer has to hire ... whom? Not the next-best candidate, because s/he is already working for someone else. They'll get the (N+1)th-best candidate, not the (M+1)th-best. The most likely actual outcome is something intermediate between the one I described above and this one.)
Suppose, for instance, that the As and Bs obey a Zipf-like law: A(n) = 1/n, B(n) = 1/n. Then the utility loss is sum {M..N} of 1/n (1/n - 1/(n+1)) = sum {M..N} of 1/n^2(n+1) ~= 1/2 (1/M^2 - 1/N^2), whereas James_Miller's account gives about 1/M^3. If M is much smaller than N -- i.e., if you'd be one of the best in the field -- then James's figure for the utility loss is too small by a factor on the order of M. If M is comparable to N -- i.e., if you'd be towards the bottom of the pack -- then James's figure is too small by a factor on the order of N-M+1. In between, some slightly funny things happen. Other than right at the endpoints, it's a pretty good approximation to say that James's figure is too small by a factor of M(N-M)/N.
This applies well to small organizations or departments, but large organizations, especially universities, could hire researches to work in a field, rather than on a specific task. Researchers working on important problems can work on things that no one would do in their absence.
I was immensely glad to find this community, because while I knew intellectually that I was not the only person who felt that rationality was important, death was bad, and technology was our savior, I had never met anyone else who did. I thus determined my career without much input from anything except my own interests; which is not so bad, of course, but I have realized that I might benefit from advice from like-minded people.
Specifically, I would like to know what LessWrong thinks I should do in order to get into "immortality research." Edit: that means "what field should I go into if I want humanity to have extended lifespans as soon as possible?"
I feel immortality, or at least life-extension, is one of - if not the - most important thing(s) humanity can accomplish right now. I don't think I am suited to AI work, however. Another obvious option is an MD, but that's not in my temperament either. My major right now is biochemistry, in preparation for a doctorate in either biochemistry itself, or pharmacology.
I think there's a good chance that advances in this area could contribute to life extension; aging is a biochemical process, right? And certainly drugs will be involved in life extension. But is this the best place to apply my efforts? I have considered that biogerontology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology) might be better, as it is about aging specifically; but I don't know much about the field - only that Wikipedia says it is new and very few universities offer degrees in it. My final idea is nanotechnology of some kind; I believe nanomachines may be able to repair our bodies. I'm not sure what type of nanotechnology I'd be looking at for this, or if degrees in it are offered.
Any ideas, suggestions, or comments in general are welcome. I favor the biochemical approach as of now, but only through temperament. As far as I know, AI, biochemical/pharmacological methods, and nanotechnology are all about equally close to giving us immortality. If someone feels one option is better than the others, or has recommended reading on the subject, please share!
Thanks in advance, my new rational friends.