One thing you need to realize, is that "hard problems" and "important things" cost money. That's just the cold hard reality of life. Now its one thing to go

One thing you need to realize, is that "hard problems" and "important things" cost money. That's just the cold hard reality of life. Now its one thing to go to the frontiers of knowledge, and push your way through the edge like Einstein, or Feynmann.. and if you can do that, its great, and 1000% respectable. Most of us aren't a Feynmann though.. and instead of pushing through in denial, we recognize that and move on. And the reality is, that you can do waay more with money than you can do with raw intelligence alone. So another and probably more realistic choice is to take cues from Elon Musk, or Mike Lazaridis, or David Shaw: go make mint with a stupid web application, or finance or whatever, and then go use that money to work on important problems, such as: Space X http://www.spacex.com/ http://www.spacex.com/ Tesla Motors http://www.teslamotors.com/ http://www.teslamotors.com/ Solar City http://www.solarcity.com/ http://www.solarcity.com/ Perimiter Institute http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ DE Shaw Research http://www.deshawresearch.com/ http://www.deshawresearch.com/ That's how you get things done