anewkid

Saying "I shouldn't bother with trying X because of reasons XYZ" is indeed a bad idea, but I try not to do that, and I think I've been decently successful. Is there anything that I should do for any of these projects, which I haven't been doing because of some convenient excuse? (This is not a rhetorical question, it would benefit me a lot if I realized I had been making some excuse to not try some new course of action.)

Privileged? I do have some privilege, in that I was born in a first-world country and not a third-world country, but that's about it. My parents aren't rich or famous or even upper middle class. My mom constantly worries about the bank foreclosing on her house because she can't pay the mortgage, my dad works as a salesman and lives in a junky 2BR apartment. I myself am flat broke, I actually have negative net worth because of the student loans I had to take out.

True, thanks for the advice. Sorry if I got upset, I had just finished reading some other comments which seem to say that the only things worth doing in life are getting wasted and partying and banging chicks, and that if I'm not doing those I'm wasting my time.

"You'll be disabused of this implicit notion that you are always right at some point."

Please tell me where I have ever said or implied that I was always right, or even right most of the time.

EDIT: I see you edited your post to say this twice, I suppose on the principle that "what I say three times is true".

"No offense, but your personality leaves a bad taste in my mouth, acidic, like a pasta sauce that hasn't been cooked long enough."

I will freely admit that I can be unpleasant at times, but I do know enough social skills to not insult random strangers who I have no reason to be hostile to.

"You ask for advice with no intent on taking it, instead hosting a pity-party where other nerds stroke your ego by telling you that the world has wronged you, reinforcing your broken worldview."

Wait, what? Look at the top-ranked comments on this thread, none of them could be remotely described as pitying me. Some people did give good advice, eg., lionhearted, zaidf, btilly.

Tinkering with wheels is indeed fun (I have done some tinkering with existing OSs).

A hundred world-class minds over six decades really is a lot.

I get along with other people (I'm not a social outcast or anything), I just don't do very much with most of them because we're not interested in the same things. Is that wrong? Should I feel terribly guilty about it? If so, why shouldn't they also feel terribly guilty for not being interested in the same things I am?

"Sorry, but you're not going to be able to get a finance internship and a research internship and a coding internship at the same time, while also becoming a writer."

Of course not. I apply for all of these internships at once so that, if one fails (as they often do), I have backup plans.

"(figure out why people like talking about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff...hint: it happens for a reason, try to be open-minded and understand that everyone is human)"

I'm not condemning them or anything, just saying that we're different. Indeed, if anything, you (and many others here) seem to be condemning me for being different.

"Stop trying to look smart."

Look smart to who? I studiously avoid mentioning any of this to anyone at my school for fear of seeming arrogant.

"It has the intellectual content of a whiffle ball, and the only reason to do it is to collect money, generally from the gullible or the corrupt."

Yup. I did these things entirely for the purpose of making money and not for the intellectual challenges, because money is useful and I'm currently broke.

"And real investors (as opposed to gamblers and shills) don't waste time modeling the market, because they've all read Malkiel."

Google Renaissance Technologies.

"Where do you find all this time?"

College is not very demanding. My usual load is two technical courses and two nontechnical courses, which take up 10 * 2 + 6 * 2 = 32 hours a week.

"You claim to be interested in physics; do you understand Maxwell's equations, stat mech, quantum decoherence, general relativity?"

Yes, yes, yes, somewhat (working on it).

"You claim an interest in math; have you run out of math courses?"

I will next year at my current pace.

"Chemistry: Do you understand the band structure of solids?"

Yup.

"Do you know what siRNA is"

Nope, thanks for the link.

"can you do graduate-level molecular biology lab work?"

I probably could given a month or so of training, but I seriously doubt any professor would let me because of my age and my relative lack of bio courses.

"Computers: Have you finished SICP, learned operating systems and algorithms?"

I haven't written my own OS or programming language if that's what you mean, but I find solving problems that have already been solved a zillion times better by thousands of other people working together over decades to be distasteful; what's the point?

"Have you even considered linguistics, or geology, or anthropology?"

Yes. I know some geology and anthropology but find linguistics boring.

"Study any foreign languages?"

Yes, I find them quite boring, it's basically just a great deal of memorization by rote.

"How's your music theory?"

Music cannot be explicitly taught in the same way that any of these other things can. I'm not sure how it can be taught, actually. I could probably become good at it given several thousand hours of work but don't see the point in investing that much time.

I don't get why, but it seems that few people here are interested in any of the same things I am. It's not like my interests are narrow; indeed, people criticize me for being too much of a dabbler (I am interested in math, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history, computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). People just tend to talk about sports and dating and parties and clubs and stuff.

Why do so many people talk about youth as some sort of idyllic time in one's life? I, for one, have found a strong trend of things getting better as I get older, not worse. Old people, in general, have more of everything, because they've had more time to accumulate it: more money, more friends, more family, more power, more skill, more social status, more life experience, more of pretty much everything (except of course for physical stamina, but this is not terribly important in today's world, as the success of numerous disabled people shows).

I think "give it time" is good advice if you have a project which is not very successful now but is on the ground running and is growing quickly, but I can't think of anything I'm doing that falls into that category.