You can get back to it.

I did the opposite decision 9 years ago - I started a PhD on cancer detection out of pure idealism, completely ignoring money as useless. Later I realized that I need large sums of money to pursue the grand dreams I had, hence I started multiple e-commerce companies (that can be almost automated) to get the necessary cashflow for independent research on what I deem important (cancer, multiplex sclerosis etc.). You are already in the position of being able to fund things that matter - now it might be a good opportunity to seek people that can help you getting your dreams of a better world come true.

I know a few people that founded successful businesses and later they removed themselves from most of the duties except for ownership and started to pursue their visions, such as prolonging human life, organ replacement etc.

It's _NEVER_ too late to start living your dream, be the best you can be, give the best you can give. Whatever you did before doesn't matter. Life is lived forwardly not in reverse. Sorry for the platitudes. People like Alan Watts can say it better and in more depth than me: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+watts

Why am I alive? What am I here to do? These are important questions, and everyone needs to answer them for themselves. We are of the universe, and we are witnesses to the universe. We are the method by which the universe can reflect upon itself.

Honestly, unless you have expensive hobbies you are passionate about, if you have enough money then you should shift your focus away from money and more towards finding happiness in your life.

There's nothing wrong with making lots of money, if you're also happy with what you're doing. But if you think you'd be happier doing something more worthwhile, then go for it. It doesn't have to be medical research. You could work on developing tools that support scientific development - things like programming tools or machine learning technology. You can still make a lot of money in those areas. You don't even have to focus on science, there is intrinsic value in politics, art, culture, education, communication, etc. Or sell everything, keep as much as you need to set yourself up doing something you enjoy and give the rest to cancer research.

Whatever you want to do, just making money for its own sake doesn't make any sense from a pragmatic point of view. Once you've ensured a stable modest lifestyle, extra money does not really increase your ability to enjoy life significantly. I am not very rich, but I have learned to cook, and I cook to my own tastes. So I get really great food every day. Alcohol is pretty cheap if that's your pleasure. Drugs less so - but spending a lot of money on drugs is bad for you in the long term. Having money helps attract sexual interest, but confidence and social skills work just as well. Money only helps get more frequent lower quality sex. High quality comes through deep mutual understanding and accommodation with you partner. You're way better off spending time investing in personal development so you can learn to build good quality relationships.

The one thing money can reliably buy you is status. It's very easy to cling to the notion that status has significant intrinsic value, but it doesn't. Status doesn't help you make friends or find love or solve your emotional problems or be happier. You might think having low status will make people ignore you or look down on you, but if you're confident, if you believe in yourself as a smart guy, that will never happen. True self-belief renders status obsolete.

Money based status is ultimately just a social competition that some people care about and some people don't. It's a shared obsession that means about as much as any other shared obsession. Your bank balance is like a high score on World of Warcraft. To some people it's the most important thing to them. But, to those on the outside, it's obvious that the obsession is unhealthy and adds little to the obsessed one's life.

I think this every day. I even bailed on a job to do a foundation degree in medicine but finances and circumstances killed that dead.

However its probably better if someone takes a pile of money from society through a business and dedicates all profit to research. Look at Gates for example. If you are qualified in the subject you're likely to be a health service or corporate drug peddler at best. If you can generate clear revenue you can hire these people and focus on something.

I want to study the use of AI in determining genetic factors to disease and the neuro-degenerative ailments that the worlds increasingly older populations are facing "but finances and circumstances killed that dead".

It's really frustrating and demoralizing that education in particular is so badly structured (in my experience). For instance: while I was getting kicked off my Cog-Sci Masters course for owing £300 a colleague was receiving a fully funded PhD position to study _Harry Potter Fan Fiction Porn_. That was a kick in the teeth.

You just got to keep at it I guess, don't let the knocks stop you realising your potential and refine your plans to the point where they are laser sharp. I think it's this kind of attitude that separates entrepreneurs from the crowd.

That just sucks. Based on your usage of £ I assume you are in the UK (I am too).

Education here is a broken pile of crap. Politics and ridiculous rules and structure galore.

For example: I did electrical engineering and nearly got kicked off my course for daring to drop an email politely asking a user telnetted into the box I was working on, to stop trying to brute force su to root on my Sun workstation which was dumping logs onto the frame buffer console and screwing up my Cadence session. They were trying to crack root and I complained and ended up with a disciplinary for breaking the communication AUP.

The fucked up bit: The attacker actually complained that I'd caught him to his tutor who kicked off the whole disciplinary process against me.

So I learned how political it is and yes you're right there were people studying crap like that at PhD level in my department. Some guy was working on electrically stimulated sex aids on my tuition fees...

Yeah that's my experience down to a T.

I once heard one of the top generals talking on the radio about the state of the MoD and he was saying that the basic career path was to suck up a decade or two of dirt before finding a desk job so obscure you can hide away for the next three or four decades and earn a pretty pension. I've always found it intriguing how well this seems to parallel academia.

Where are you based? Get in touch if you fancy chatting some time (email in profile), I find it helps to vent spleen sometimes ;)

FWIW - it can be done. What you describe is very similar to the situation I faced some years back.

Similar feelings motivated me to make a change, which is how I ended up working day-to-day with the late stage cancer patients I mentioned upthread.

It's definitely not an easy change (and not a cheap one, either) but I'm pretty sure I'd make the same choice if I had to do it all over again.

But your company is paying taxes and employing people so they can put their kids through college, pay taxes themselves etc. Not everybody can be researchers. You're doing something valuable.

But I try to pay as little taxes as possible. Also, these are the same taxes that fund wars in far away countries over oil and politics.

1) You can donate to worthy causes. 2) You can relocate to countries that aren't declining hegemonies with bloated militaries and rotting schools.

Don't we all? :-) But a little tax on the large amounts you make could help. Plus, you can also donate to cancer charity.

> I could have been spending my smarts on something, anything, useful like medical research

Whenever our short lives are maintained to be the end-goal we will only reach meaninglessness or delusion. Despite the likelihood of inviting downvotes, I must say that an investment in eternal wealth is the way to go. I'm referring to coming to faith in God. [Matthew 11:28]

    > But I won't

So do.

The really nasty question is how one can actually make an impact on something truly useful like medical research. It's not nearly as easy to figure out where our efforts have the most effect in medicine (or any form of science, really) as in ad-clicks.

But if thousands of us try a little niche thing, maybe 10 of us will actually find something.

pivot your company/tech into clinical trial recruiting/enrollment. According to Tufts university (too lazy to find the link)80% or so of all clinical trials for new drugs are under enrolled: not enough patients to get the data. This delays approvals of new life saving products, and also inflates costs exponentially. Use your app/ad/site and parlay that into getting people matched up with clinical trials or something! edit: you can also create apps that help clinical trials collect data from patients easily, such as a pain survey app and the data they enter goes right to the investigators, and also to the CRO and sponsor