One thing to do is review my emotion and intuition articles. I think a lot of people’s bad feelings related to CF have to do with suppressing some of their ideas that conflict with CF. I wrote five intuition related articles fairly recently as some of my best ideas about the problem.
Engaging significantly with the articles before feeling bad would be a good idea.
Social status dynamics are another relevant topic. Sometimes forum posters may be mean or lower your status in veiled/sneaky ways (just as is pretty common everywhere else). This analysis discusses status some and gives some sense of the huge amount of information (and sometimes manipulation) that can be involved in fairly short communication: Curiosity – Analyzing How Culture Manipulates You by Pulling Your Puppet Strings
You can review examples in the BoI and FI discussion archives at Curiosity Blog – eBooks My discussion with Aubrey de Gray, also on that page, is essentially another example.
Posters who have been around for years might be willing to offer some summaries or answer some questions.
There are more recent examples such as Elliot Temple and Corentin Biteau Discussion and Curiosity – Firebench Debate
My one word summary of the main reason people leave is: dishonesty. I have stuff on that topic like Lying · Elliot Temple
You should like it. If it clashes with your intuitions or subconscious, but you try to do it anyway due to explicit arguments, you’ll probably have a bad time and do mediocre work. You don’t want a career you’re conflicted about.
It’s possible to change your subconscious and intuitions to change your interests, but most people are bad at that. You can try something for a while and see if you like it. If not, you can try some more (if you don’t mind too much) and see if it grows on you. Sometimes things don’t click initially but improve within a few months. If it’s still not working after 3 months, that sometimes just isn’t really fixable for people no matter what rational arguments they have saying they should like it. Sometimes you can identify and fix a specific problem: e.g. you might find a different book or teacher with better explanations and like the subject much better once you start actually understanding it.
Your interests and other ideas have shaped you for many years and informed how you look at the world and interpret things, and what information you’ve gathered, so changing fields can be way way way more work than you would expect. You could have to review and reinterpret a ton of stuff. So it’s usually better to look for something that already fits some of your existing interests and talents reasonably well.
Another important consideration is finding high leverage work (matters both to pay and making a difference). Also honest work, creative work, and work that makes things better or about the same, not worse.
Other Comments
Why now? Maybe partly in the form of “Why did you join the CF forum now?” I’m guessing something changed in your life recently that’s relevant. There might be some change that’s already obvious to you or you might initially have no clear answer. (If the answer is private that’s fine, no need to reply, but you should at least answer this to yourself – including probably writing it down in a journal or at least speaking the words out loud.)
Why CF as opposed to other pro-rationality stuff or being a fan of football or whatever other stuff people do with their lives?
If you have much money, then buying my help is a relevant option.