If you expect to be able to directly contribute to FAI, my current very tentative advice (which I'm following myself) is to focus on pure math, assuming you understand the philosophical side (problem statement) well enough (which would be the limiting factor for people who are already mathematicians). Take this with a lot of salt, since it's more of a hunch following from the character of seemingly relevant informal ideas, and I can't exhibit actual FAI-relevant math (other than the decision theory that was previously published, which is an important foothold and whose meaning I still don't quite grasp, which is also one motivation).

I agree with this. Look at the list of SIAI's publications - not all of them would have required a math genius to write.

I think that some of the most important papers relating to the Singularity so far have been (in no particular order) Eliezer's CEV proposal, Omohundro's Basic AI Drives, Robin Hanson's If uploads come first, Carl Shulman's Whole brain emulations and the evolution of superorganisms, Eliezer's Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk, Anders Sandberg's and Nick Bostrom's Whole brain emulation roadmap, lukeprog and Louie Helm's The Singularity and Machine Ethics, and the intelligence explosion paper that lukeprog and Anna Salamon are writing right now. I'd also like to imagine that my two draft papers might have some value. None of those would have required a math genius for a writer - in fact, the WBE roadmap is probably the only one that required any math knowledge at all. Of possible future directions, many of the Singularity and Machine Ethics proposals can be done without being a math genius as well.

Then there are various other useful paths that are less directly associated with research. Popular writing (the career path that I'm thinking about concentrating on) might inspire countless of people to pursue FAI-related pursuits if done well. (Or turn them away from it, if done badly.)

Note that the "it's better to earn money to fund others to do research" presumption assumes that there are people who can be hired to do research. If everyone who's interested in FAI/Singularity issues and isn't a math genius decides to just earn money instead, that means that the only people who can be hired to do work on FAI/Singularity issues are either math geniuses or folks who'd rather be doing something else but agree to do this because it pays the bills. It'd be better to have math geniuses and genuinely motivated folks who were ready to do the tasks that weren't the math geniuses' comparative advantage.

Ah, I see, we are on the same page regarding money...

I also think that raising the sanity-waterline is a quite effective strategy. You describe yourself as an extrovert and say that you like writing. Maybe a "pop-science-career" is really the right path for you.

OK, I can't think of a clear way to say this so bear with me. There is something that is logically true that goes in two directions, like modus ponens/modus tollens do, and I will first describe an inverted version of my argument. This argument would apply to someone whose thinking is the inverse of yours. Then I will explain why I have never in fact directed that argument towards such people. As the last step, I will flip the argument around so it no longer has implications for the person who is in the inverse position of yours, but instead has implications for you - implications opposite of those it had for the hypothetical inversely situated person.

1. If you are unsure about what is best, there is still a best action that will vey often resemble strenuous effort towards a single goal. Two related but distinct concepts leading to this conclusion are the expected Value of Information and the principle that "... the optimal strategy is to behave lawfully, even in an environment that has random elements."

   So we see that at less than infinite levels of certainty that something ought to be done, it may still be that that thing ought to be done with full focus.

2. This is a true principle but can lead to cultishness. It is a bad idea to present this true argument to people because once people act with total effort for a cause, they tend to subconsciously violate the principle of behaving lawfully and conclude their total effort is reasonable only if they believe totally, and then they tell themselves that their actions are justified, and consequently that they have justified total belief.

   This would be bad. Cultishness is a characteristic of human groups, so the argument that people should support the group beyond what they intuitively think would lead to net negative consequences.

   It is also true that actions from internal motivations are generally more fruitful than externally motivated ones, so I would let people decide to give their time and money at their own pace.

3. I deploy this line of argument because you have already said that you have decided you are motivated to work hard for certain things. Assuming you decided at the optimal level of belief, that level of belief isn't so high, and so you shouldn't feel threatened by doubts, obligated to pretend to near certainty, or similar cultish behaviors.

   Just as the uncertain should commit themselves to working hard - though one shouldn't say so, lest cultishness increase - those working hard should remember that an epistemic state under which their actions are perfectly justified is one of considerable doubt and uncertainty.

   So say, if you will, that until evidence indicates otherwise militates, you have devoted your life to a cause. There is concomitant with that no obligation at any level to say that you have been "convinced" of any premise to an extreme degree.