It’s possible that this wouldn’t work for everyone, but so far I am very satisfied working on a PhD on agent foundations (AIXI). There are a lot of complaints here about academic incentives, but mostly I just ignore them. Possibly this will eventually interfere with my academic career prospects, but in the meantime I get years to work on basically whatever I think is interesting and important, and at the end of it I can reasonably expect to end up with a PhD and a thesis I’m proud of, which seems like enough to land on my feet. Looks like the best of both worlds to me.
It’s possible that this wouldn’t work for everyone, but so far I am very satisfied working on a PhD on agent foundations (AIXI). There are a lot of complaints here about academic incentives, but mostly I just ignore them. Possibly this will eventually interfere with my academic career prospects, but in the meantime I get years to work on basically whatever I think is interesting and important, and at the end of it I can reasonably expect to end up with a PhD and a thesis I’m proud of, which seems like enough to land on my feet. Looks like the best of both worlds to me.