Um, yeah, I was actually suffering from that just now after having written my other long comment in this thread. I know what I want; I have plenty of selfish goals, for there’s always another book that you haven’t read, and there’s always more math that you don’t know, and I have far too many ideas of my own to follow up on, and one particular set of ideas that I thought was particularly important (to me)---and surely I can get a better dayjob, and I have a few friends, and I could be very happy this way for a very long time---
But then I start worrying that I am insufficiently “contributing to society,” or mitigating existential risks, or whatever, and this is a much harder problem of which I am not even capable of thinking clearly about.
Um, yeah, I was actually suffering from that just now after having written my other long comment in this thread. I know what I want; I have plenty of selfish goals, for there’s always another book that you haven’t read, and there’s always more math that you don’t know, and I have far too many ideas of my own to follow up on, and one particular set of ideas that I thought was particularly important (to me)---and surely I can get a better dayjob, and I have a few friends, and I could be very happy this way for a very long time---
But then I start worrying that I am insufficiently “contributing to society,” or mitigating existential risks, or whatever, and this is a much harder problem of which I am not even capable of thinking clearly about.