Life Choice: Should Someone Highly Interested in AGI Research Jeopardize Their Existing Career to Pursue It?
I have a BS + MS in optical engineering, and have had a profitable three or so years in the field as an engineer. I enjoy learning about and applying physics, including optical physics, but this makes up a tiny percentage of the tasks performed as an "engineer" so far in my experience, and I see no sign of change on the horizon. Many of the tasks I am assigned seem eminently automatable, and performing them is excruciating for me (though I recognize my good fortune overall). Even when there are micro-problems which require creativity to solve, I still find the process painful, given that they are other people's problems rather than my own. It is the same pain of school: creativity forced to work toward answers to questions not asked.
So, where to draw the line? I think I have fallen in love with AGI research, having followed the area for years, learning and reading bits and pieces. I've been working on independent research in my free time for over a year, in addition to related content (for several years) which is meaningful, creative, educational, largely very fun to produce -- and perhaps ultimately valuable. I'm confident I could publish ideas which will be of interest to the field, and that I would be happy working on all of these things for many years to come.
The question: Should I take a hiatus from my career to pursue independent research (and related content creation), full-time, for some number of months?
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.A hiatus would create a "resume gap," weakening hireability in the field. This is to be avoided, but only assuming working in the field is itself desirable, which may not be the case, here, unless better opportunities arise (roles allowing more contact with physics, math and design -- i.e. "engineering"!).
The resume gap can be absolved by simply listing "independent research" for the period in question. Forming an LLC would also help to formalize the venture (in addition to having other uses).
This is solved by actively doing some visible stuff you'd want to do anyway as an AGI researcher.
A hiatus would incur a relatively heavy cost: the cost of living + the opportunity cost of lost salary. Earning money as quickly as possible, as early as possible, is important for long-term financial success.
The cost of living for several months is not large relative to the amount of money in savings. The opportunity cost and financial strategy points are valid, but pale in comparison to the moral cost of not pursuing what one is passionate about and good at -- especially when there is arguably some potential for value, given the state of the world regarding AI/AGI. Being an employee in an uninteresting field for years or decades is a catastrophic loss, and all too common.
Good thought, in general. But the dislocation would take significant time and resources itself. The current lease arrangement also cannot be exited without a heavy fee. I also moved recently, I would love to not do that again for some time.
The failure to have found roles which have a closer relationship with physics, math and design may stem from an underlying mediocrity as an optical engineer; this itself could stem from the underlying (or widespread) disinterest in it within your mind.
Empirically, roles with "a closer relationship with physics, math and design" overwhelmingly seem to be reserved for PhD-holders. So mediocrity may not be to blame for the as-yet inability to land engaging roles. However, both could be factors.
Option 1: Continue working the day job and balancing the other pursuits on the side.
This brings us back to our conversation about discipline. Maybe we can recapitulate here, or maybe best done elsewhere. Lots of things are excruciating, like homework and exams; should I not have done them? Exercise as well. There seem to be problems which can only be solved by maintaining other problems..!
Should suffering be avoided? Not if it's useful..? I'm still conflicted about this.
Just because lots of things are excruciating doesn’t mean life necessarily involves those things. Life doesn’t have to be difficult in this way.
You can find a passion, have fun 100% of the time, and never coerce yourself. (That’s an ideal we can fall short of – if we ‘only’ have fun 90% of the time, that’s still infinitely better than dooming ourselves to a life we hate.)
Should suffering be avoided? Not if it's useful..?
Self-coercion should be avoided, yes. When we coerce ourself, we are not creating knowledge and instead arbitrarily favoring one idea over another. If a part of you disagrees that something is useful, then don’t do it!
You can always find a common preference with yourself. Problems are soluble. Do not act on ideas that have pending criticisms.
You’re young. Now’s the time to take (educated, calculated) risks. Even if quitting turns out to be a mistake, you have all the time in the world to correct the mistake and recover. You can always find some day job somewhere. But you may not always be able to pursue your passion.
I find this point irrefutable, aside from the risk being educated or calculated... Maybe it is those things...
What I would ultimately love to do is pivot into AGI research as a career, but when is pursuing that educated risk-taking vs fantasy?
Why does it have to be a career? You could try it for a year or six months or whatever. If you don’t like it, you switch to something else. That’d be fine.
It would be fantasy/reckless if, for example, you were in your mid 40s, had a family to take care of, and had no savings.
How much time and energy do you really have for research while working? 1hr daily? 2 hours daily? 4 hours daily?
Leaving your job allows for the possibility of consistent high quality research daily.
Yes, very little time and energy for research while working, a handful of hours a week. The intermittence carries its own cost, I also find.
Another reason to quit is that you work at night. I believe you told me you don’t personally mind this, but continued interruption of your circadian rhythm is bound to impact your health.
Leaving the job means more time for research. It also means more time to find a much better job that allows you the energy for research.
Leaving gives space for better balance.
Have you thought about quiet quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
Tyler explained what he dislikes about his job in the ‘About’ section of the discussion, which is quoted in the bounty terms:
Many of the tasks I am assigned seem eminently automatable, and performing them is excruciating for me (though I recognize my good fortune overall). Even when there are micro-problems which require creativity to solve, I still find the process painful, given that they are other people's problems rather than my own. It is the same pain of school: creativity forced to work toward answers to questions not asked.
You need to mark your submission as a criticism if you want it to be eligible for a payout from the bounty.
Option 2: Go on hiatus from the day job/career, and focus on creative pursuits and research, full-time, for some number of months (duration perhaps depending on job opportunities).
One rule of thumb financial advisors have told me in the past is to have enough cash on hand to last at least six months without an income.
If you don’t, quitting your job right now could be a bad idea, and your first priority should be to build enough runway.
(This is not financial advice – follow at your own risk.)
My thought was to negate (criticize) the "if you don't" portion of your comment, which was a criticism of mine. Unrefuted, yours sits as a criticism of the original, but it isn't...
- Go on hiatus?
- No runway = bad
- Do have runway
How should criticisms with conditionals in them be handled? Is this comment a criticism?!
Well, agreement doesn’t sound like criticism. It sounds like agreement!
But I see now that you meant to say – correct me if I’m wrong – that the six-month minimum of reserves won’t be a problem for you. In which case that indeed neutralizes my criticism. I’ll counter-criticize my own.
Consider your current balance of working and research.
Could you cut other activities, keep the job, and increase focus on research?
I think I've compressed other activities as much as possible. With the current job, I don't think I can increase focus on research any further. The concerns are over the tradeoffs of leaving the day job (finances, impact to employability, etc.).
FWIW, if I was hiring, and I was looking at a resume of someone who always ‘played it safe’ and was very concerned about what others think, I wouldn’t hire them. Whereas I would hire someone who takes smart risks and cares about truth over popularity, even if they have a resume ‘gap’.
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
It’s not strictly required – there are cases where joining multiple criticisms into one comment is fine – but I almost always recommend splitting them, especially for beginners.
… my bad for combining ideas in #3819 …
No worries, and good catch. What you could do, to clean up this branch, is revise #3819 to remove this part:
The concerns are over the tradeoffs of leaving the day job (finances, impact to employability, etc.).
And then, before submitting the revision form, uncheck criticism #3834 underneath the form.
A related idea is to become more disciplined with my time, getting more out of the off days.
Discipline means arbitrarily favoring one conflicting idea over another. ‘Arbitrarily’ meaning favoring without resolving the conflict.
You don’t actually know which idea is better, if any, before you resolve the conflict. So siding with one before then is irrational.
Instead of practicing discipline, practice resolving conflicts between ideas and thus finding common preferences with yourself: ideas you wholeheartedly agree with, have no reservations about.
Veritula helps you with that.
How far out does the graph of irrational ideas go? Is the argument that: discipline, grit, drive, tenacity and more concepts in this web are all bad/irrational? This is quite a claim. Is "work" bad? Irrational? Work to me means discipline, at least in large part...
I want to understand this. Take the horrible and widespread case of: "I hate my job, and all other jobs that seem available. But I need money to live." How can the conflict be resolved? What is one to do until they resolve it? Surely it is rational to work to make money... Yet in this case, this requires forcing oneself to do something unpleasant; hence the rational thing to do in this case requires discipline.
What is one to do until they resolve it? Surely it is rational to work to make money... Yet in this case, this requires forcing oneself to do something unpleasant; hence the rational thing to do in this case requires discipline.
Well yeah, acting without a solution is self-coercive. But that’s not a refutation of the idea that problems are soluble.
So we could say working via discipline to make money tentatively, as part of a problem solving process, is not irrational? I suppose that's what I'm doing now...
Is the argument that: discipline, grit, drive, tenacity and more concepts in this web are all bad/irrational?
Discipline is irrational because it’s self-coercive by definition. For the others, it depends. Are you being tenacious because you’re forcing yourself to stick to some topic you don’t like? Then it’s irrational. Are you being tenacious because you have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge in that area? Rational.
How can the conflict be resolved?
By coming up with a new option that has no pending criticisms. We can’t state it in advance.
So far this has proven ineffective, though a skill which could be improved. However, questions remain for me over whether self-disciplining is good, in general, and where to draw the line between coercion and healthy structure.
skill
Self-discipline isn’t a skill. It’s an anti-skill and irrational.
Apparently I remain unconvinced of this. I see you've defined discipline in #3833, will continue, there. (How do we draw ligaments between ideas in different threads?! Is this deeper than merely an aesthetic or organizational function? Hmm...)
This isn’t a criticism. A criticism must point out some shortcoming. Please read ‘How Does Veritula Work?’
(How do we draw ligaments between ideas in different threads?! Is this deeper than merely an aesthetic or organizational function? Hmm...)
Using hash links like you did is fine. But feel free to submit a feature request in the ‘Veritula – Meta’ thread if you have any ideas beyond that.
Have you fully used your cash to free time/energy after work?
You may have money for laundry services, cleaning, cooking, and so on. All the other things that take time in your day can be removed with money, giving you space to do research just fine
This seems more like a specific implementation of #3782 than a standalone criticism.
Read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. That should give you some fuel to move forward.
If that’s too long, watch ‘The Simplest Thing in the World’
The Fountainhead is on my list. Listened to ‘The Simplest Thing in the World’. One message seems to be that one's creativity will continuously resist attempts to coerce it into doing something it doesn't want. A will of its own. I feel such resistance acutely at this current job, more so but no differently than during previous jobs and assignments, as we all have. But what is the import of the story to the present debate? My creative muse will continue fighting me so long as I'm trying to steer it towards other things? I have no doubt. The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think. Where does one draw the line between passion and security? Maybe there is no general-purpose explanation. I will continue reflecting.
The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think.
There’s nothing practical about working a job you hate. There’s nothing practical about fighting yourself.
Where does one draw the line between passion and security?
There’s no security in not pursuing your passion, and there’s no need to make this kind of tradeoff anyway.
Conceded re: what is practical in the case of this job, or others that are hated. In the sense that the debate here relates to careers vs passions in general, I think the question of what is practical remains...
"No need to make this kind of tradeoff..."? Please explain.
Take another passion, such as playing the guitar. If one dislikes anything that stops them from playing, it's still impractical to only pursue guitar, isn't it? In general, one would run out of savings and be in poverty. It's practical to avoid that.
You could play the guitar and have a well-paying job you enjoy as well.
There exist people whose passions exclude all available paying jobs, unless this is not physically possible. Aspiring guitarists in dark ages.
Well, this is starting to sound a bit contrived. But even in the dark ages, people could be guitarists and find a job they love. Or they could create a new job they loved.
The guitarist line above is of course just a throwaway example. The core claims here seem very general to me. Is your stance that a person can always make a living doing something they enjoy? People can create all possible jobs, but this says nothing about human lifetimes, economics, etc. The first people couldn’t have had much fun, I wouldn’t think. Please explain.
It’s always possible to make a living doing something you enjoy. But if you’re looking for a guarantee, you will be disappointed.
It’s contrived beyond the specific example of the guitarist from the dark ages. You’ll never run out of examples that could be challenging for me to answer. I can’t give you all the solutions ahead of time. That doesn’t mean problems aren’t soluble.
All I can tell you is that you’re a problem-solving engine, so it’s possible possible for you to enjoy life 100% of the time, and that this is worth striving for.
When a revision addresses a criticism, you don’t counter-criticize the criticism, you deselect it at the bottom of the revision form.
To be sure, this isn’t a big deal. But try revising #3908 again, just to practice.
There's no security in not pursuing your passion
Do we mean by security something other than food/water/shelter? Or, resisting your passion only buys temporary security? This isn't true; people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
You should reach far higher in life than merely ensuring food/water/shelter. It’s a pretty elementary concern and easily met.
… people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
Physically maybe. I can’t look into those people’s minds but I suspect they don’t ever really feel psychologically secure. It takes a certain kind of mind to have physical security, rather than fulfillment, as one’s main concern for one’s whole life. https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-esteem.html
It’s essentially living like an animal.
You didn’t mark this as a criticism, but it sounds like one. Consider revising your idea to mark it as a criticism. (No changes to the text necessary for that.)
I don't feel I had/have any criticism of your post (#3746), or of the Rand story, so left it as a comment.
But what is the import of the story to the present debate?
That sounds like a criticism. It implies that you don’t see the import.
Only that I didn't see it, not that there wasn't any, but I see that this is effectively the same. Edited the comment to be a criticism.
But what is the import of the story to the present debate?
‘The Simplest Thing in the World’ has themes about fear and safety vs self-actualization. For example:
What’s the quality that all the people you know have got, the outstanding quality in all of them? Their motive power? Fear. Not fear of anyone in particular, just fear. Just a great, blind force without object. Malicious fear. The kind that makes them want to see you suffer. Because they know that they, too, will have to suffer and it makes it easier, to know that you do also. The kind that makes them want to see you being small and funny and smutty. Small people are safe. It’s not really fear, it’s more than that. Like Mr. Crawford, for instance, who’s a lawyer and who’s glad when a client of his loses a suit. He’s glad, even though he loses money on it; even though it hurts his reputation. He’s glad, and he doesn’t even know that he’s glad. God, what a story there is in Mr. Crawford! If you could put him down on paper as he is, and explain just why he is like that, and . . .
@tyler-mills, both bounties are over.
At the time of writing, the idea saying to keep your job (#3638) has 4 pending criticisms.
The idea saying to quit and do research (#3639) has no pending criticisms.
So at this moment, the rational choice would be to quit your job. Hope this brings you some clarity.