I had exactly the same line of thoughts until last year, when I decided to write several articles about AI safety, on the topics which seem to be underexplored.
For what it’s worth, I thought your posts trying to cover underexplored topics weren’t very strong, but your recent post about the Fermi paradox was unexpectedly good. So it seems like doing stuff that interests you is more fruitful than doing stuff because it’s important/underexplored/etc. At least that’s always been true for me.
I had exactly the same line of thoughts until last year, when I decided to write several articles about AI safety, on the topics which seem to be underexplored.
For what it’s worth, I thought your posts trying to cover underexplored topics weren’t very strong, but your recent post about the Fermi paradox was unexpectedly good. So it seems like doing stuff that interests you is more fruitful than doing stuff because it’s important/underexplored/etc. At least that’s always been true for me.