What is the difference between a smart person who has read the sequences and considers AI x-risk important and interesting, but continues to be primarily a consumer of ideas, and someone who starts having ideas? I am not trying to set a really high bar here -- they don't have to be good ideas. They can't be off-the-cuff either, though. I'm talking about someone taking their ideas through multiple iterations.
A person does not need to research full-time to have ideas. Ideas can come during downtime. Maybe it is something you think about during your commute, and talk about occasionally at a lesswrong meetup.
There is something incomplete about my model of people doing this vs not doing this. I expect more people to have more ideas than they...
Adding an 'obvious' but important answer that I didn't see, and couldn't find with a ctrl+f: cultivating the environment that lets you have sustained mental focus on what you want to make intellectual progress on. I first called this 'avoiding distraction' and wrote the below:
Where 'distraction' does not mean 'something unexpected suddenly disrupting you', but rather something which is occupying your focus in a sustained way, and which may not be unexpected or random-feeling.
This explains why I have more ideas when I'm e.g laying in bed than when I'm at my... (read more)