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RowanE comments on Open thread, Jan. 12 - Jan. 18, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm not really considering a change in major as on the table, for various reasons, mostly personal. I'm more thinking of what career to try for given the degree I'm on track for and that I've rejected the obvious choices for that degree.
The difference with the "effective egoist" approach is the diminishing returns value of money - altruists want to earn as much as they can over the course of their lives, I want to earn a set amount in as little time as possible, and might want to earn more if I'm making lots of money quickly or without stress. That's the main reason the "get PhD, become quant" track is ruled out - the "teaching sounds horrible" aside was referring to actually becoming a teacher, which is a common suggestion for what to do with a physics degree when ruling out science, I wasn't actually considering how bad teaching undergrads would be.
And there's not really a "too evil" for me, my response to the ethical obligation to donate to efficient charity is to notice the that I don't feel guilty even though the logic seems perfectly sound and say "well I guess I'm already an unrepentant murderer, and therefore evil" and then functionally be an egoist while still using utilitarianism for actual moral questions.
If they want to live forever the effective egoist still has linear utility WRT money until radical life extension and friendly AI research runs out of room for more funding.
If radical life extension eliminates biological ageing and thereby increases life expectancies by 1,000 years, scrounging together enough money to increase the chance it's accomplished in my lifetime by 0.1% is worth 1 year of life to me. That would take a phenomenal amount of money, and if I have to spend even two years working to get that money when I could otherwise support myself on passive income, I've taken a loss.
The point is to live until the functional immortality date.
Well, yes, that's why I didn't compare it to other interventions I could make and say they're much better investments, because the obvious response would be to do both, and why I described the amount of life extension funding in terms that still make sense with reaching the immortality deadline in mind. Increasing the chance you live forever with personal donations to the relevant research groups has a very low expected value per amount of money spent.