"My most important advice here is stark and politically very incorrect: Don't give too much weight to the social importance of the issue; instead, do what captu

"My most important advice here is stark and politically very incorrect: Don't give too much weight to the social importance of the issue; instead, do what captures your intellectual interest and creative imagination. This is not to deny the importance of paying attention to the real world. Nor is it to say that abstract theory is necessarily more valuable than applied work. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But I do believe that mere relevance of an issue will not guarantee good research unless you have a genuine drive to work on it. If not, leave it to someone else. Good work on an apparently unimportant problem will have more long-run value than mediocre work on one of greater intrinsic importance. And one's judgment of importance can always be wrong; concepts of relevance can change over time." - Feynman