That plan worked for you, but you're very unusual. You'd probably be an even bigger intellectual celebrity if you took the academic path.
Someone closer to average, like me, cannot do research alone, only in a group of like-minded people.
That plan worked for you, but you're very unusual.
Weren't you essentially following my plan too, i.e., working in your free time on topics being neglected by academia? (Are you still doing this, BTW, after you quit from being an SI research associate?) Are you implying that the plan isn't working for you?
You'd probably be an even bigger intellectual celebrity if you took the academic path.
I'm not sure how you figured that. If I had gone into academia I most likely would have gone into computer science and specialized in something not particularly Ea...
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.