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ModusPonies comments on Is protecting yourself from your own biases self-defeating? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The bias I'd worry about most, in your situation, would be the planning fallacy. What you want to do after graduating high school is a pretty weak predictor of what you'll want to do six to eight years from now. Deciding which path to follow sounds premature, I think. To the extent that it's possible, I'd suggest choosing a path that leaves both options open. (I suspect there's a lot of overlap between medicine and biochem courses at the undergraduate level.) Assuming your preferences stay the same, you'd be able to choose where to specialize in a year or two, when you have more information about how good you are.
How would you feel about doing research that is merely pretty good? Is that a better or worse outcome than going into medicine?
Having the advice is better than not having it, so long as you're willing to ignore bad advice. The disadvantage is that you don't know which strangers are competent. If you can get advice from domain experts who aren't extremely close to you (i.e. family friends, boss's coworkers, and everyone else you might meet when "networking"), that gets you both reliability and impartiality.
I wish to cure aging. I'd need to do stellar research to that end, unfortunately. It'd still be preferable to practicing Medicine for the rest of my life though.
Another option is to go in to medicine, then donate money to groups that are working on life extension. If people working on life extension are funding-limited (as opposed to researcher-limited, where they have the funds and they just need researchers to grant them to), then this would seem to be a better choice. (Dunno how much funding is available for life extension research from mainstream academic funding channels.)
It is extremely unlikely that you will cure aging by yourself. What happens if you frame it as "I want to make a significant contribution to curing aging"?
I still don't know whether I'm up for it. I wish I could shadow some scientist in a lab or something along those lines but this ain't possible.
I guess I'll have to stick with Medicine, just in case I end up being not a great researcher.
I would say that it is better to try and fail to become "the best possible you" than to live life in mediocrity. I would definitely not choose the safest option instead of the best while still in university. (In fact I was so fortunate as to have a compromise available.) The time to work for your dreams is now. You (hopefully) don't have burdens like kids, debt, huge possessions (house, car) etc. to care for so make mistakes and learn from them. Me stealing/paraphrasing: "Try and you can fail, try not and you have already failed!" Of course I might just be someone giving bad advice, but I think not. (obviously) You won't waste your time if you fail becoming a researcher, so definitely try it.
This sounds like an excellent idea, if it's possible. Did you try asking one?
Haven't found any. As a side note, I live in a country where the gov't spends more money on churches than on health care, science or education.
How much time did you spend searching?
This seems like a fairly important task, you shouldn't give up easily. Which country are you in, anyway?
Mind sharing which country you are from? Based on your name, I'd guess you are of either German or Danish ancestry.
Are there any obvious bad consequences of turning out to be a not-great researcher? Are there any specific ones you are trying to avoid? It might turn out that they aren't consequences at all or can be avoided by other means.
The worst one: I would eventually die. Immortality is my long-term goal. See: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/write-your-hypothetical-apostasy.html.
As for specific ones, I guess being broke, unemployed is my main concern.
You second part sound like a bit of all-or-nothing thinking. You don't necessarily have to be a great researcher to remain employed and not broke. Do you have a rough idea of what wages you would require for your living expenses?
I guess somewhere around 20-30k USD per year would suffice.
How many scientists did you ask before you concluded that isn't possible? If you know nobody personally, LinkedIn, Xing or Facebook provide easy ways.