What did you end up choosing to study with data science? I'm in a bootcamp choosing a topic and I have been brainstorming ideas like crazy recently, and would be happy to discuss this more with you if you are interested.
I see a hilarious and inspiring similarity between your story and mine.
In high school, I realized that I enjoyed reflecting on topics to achieve coherence, discussing mechanisms of superficial phenomena, and wanted everyone to be happy on a deep level. So I created a religion, because, of course, I wanted to save the world. I thought other religions were a failed attempt to incorporate modern positive psychology learnings (which had "solved happiness") into moral theories but I wanted to use the meme potential of social phenomena like religion ...
So I was brainstorming recently with a friend about this very topic: how to convince someone to support a goal of rationality (existential risk reduction, AI study), who doesn't enjoy engaging in rational reasoning. Like I'd love to be able to persuade my random gen pop friend to be vegetarian, or think about the real disparities in the world, or about the implications of our actions if they were scaled up.
2 possible strategies I came up with, and all border on Rhetoric, Persuasion, and I guess the Dark Arts in general are
Inspiration: "Inspire"...
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This bet would've paid major dividends in hindsight. Is there a way to bet on OpenAI and Anthropic or other AI safety focused labs to both give them more access to capital and to make a profit? Nvidia stock has already ballooned quite a bit, and seems to be mostly duel use. Also I'm not confident about the safety credibility of many other AI companies. Although scoring each major foundation model building company for safety would be a useful project to do... (Pondering if I should do this)
I'm asking this mostly to see if anyone else has already done their homework on this question.