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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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

A related idea is to become more disciplined with my time, getting more out of the off days.

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.).

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.

It does sound like Deutsch thinks all these different criteria boil down to being about hard vs easy to vary, see #3814.

Not according to Deutsch. He says hard to vary is epistemologically fundamental, that all progress is based on it. For example, he phrases testability in terms of hard to vary (BoI chapter 1):

When a formerly good explanation has been falsified by new observations, it is no longer a good explanation, because the problem has expanded to include those observations. Thus the standard scientific methodology of dropping theories when refuted by experiment is implied by the requirement for good explanations.

He also says that “good explanations [are] essential to science…” (thanks @tom-nassis for finding this quote). Recall that a good explanation is one that is hard to vary.

For Deutsch, hard to vary is the key mode of criticism, not just one of many.

It does sound like Deutsch thinks all these different criteria boil down to being about hard vs easy to vary, see #3807.

The quote may be false, but I don’t see how it’s misleading. I’m not quoting Deutsch in isolation or cherry-picking information or anything like that.

Liberty responded (1:39:46) that that quote is misleading because it makes it sound like hard to vary is the only criterion people use when making decisions, which can’t be true. There are other criteria, like “consistency with data”, “logical consistency”, “fitting in with existing theories”, etc.

I’m fine allowing user input to sidestep the creativity problem, see #3802.

I’m not saying hard to vary is a decision-making method. I’m saying it’s an integral part of Deutsch’s decision-making method. As I write in my article:

He argues that “we should choose between [explanations] according to how good they are…: how hard to vary.”

Liberty said (at 1:38:39) hard to vary isn’t a method of decision-making. It’s a factor people take into account when they make decisions, but decision-making itself is a creative process.

Not according to Deutsch. He says hard to vary is epistemologically fundamental, that all progress is based on it. For example, he phrases testability in terms of hard to vary (BoI chapter 1):

When a formerly good explanation has been falsified by new observations, it is no longer a good explanation, because the problem has expanded to include those observations. Thus the standard scientific methodology of dropping theories when refuted by experiment is implied by the requirement for good explanations.

For Deutsch, hard to vary is the key mode of criticism, not just one of many.

fundamental

@zelalem-mekonnen suggested during a space (37:36) that hard to vary is just one mode of criticism.

But calling a theory ‘good’ sounds like an endorsement. Deutsch also writes (BoI chapter 10) that a “superb” theory is “exceedingly hard to vary”. Ultimately we’d have to ask him, but for now, given the strength and positivity of those terms, I think it’s fair to conclude that he means ‘hard to vary’ as an endorsement.

Even if we allow creative user input, eg a score for the quality of an explanation, we run into all kinds of open questions, such as what upper and lower limits to use for the score, and unexpected behavior, such as criticisms pushing an explanation’s score beyond those limits.

Huh, no. I said you found a level where the epistemology is unproblematic to specify and turned that into Veritula. I said the opposite. You misunderstood me.