My sense is that anything that accelerates reaching Broadcast Towers is a good thing. CR isn't quite as time-sensitive. Taking Rationalism removes the
need for a GS and the Porcelain Tower, and if your build order can't handle those then producing them is a poor idea.
It may be worthwhile to ditch the first GS altogether (and perhaps the Porcelain Tower as well) and pop out a pair of Engineers and a pair of Artists at the 100/300 breakpoints. If you get to Metal Casting and Economics fast enough, that shouldn't screw up your specialist usage too badly.
Maximizing

output rather than Research Agreements before Free Speech and Cristo Redentor is a bad idea, because you need a lot more total points than a player that gets those swiftly. That's why Marcelvv's strategy works - he didn't take a lot of policies early in order to maximize early Science output, then bought them all at 50% off with full

production multipliers at the end.
That said, you still want a building like Hermitage ASAP, because it has a huge modifier and it's worth increasing the cost of future policies to get 60-100

per turn now. You're always going to come out ahead building Hermitage; a theoretical breakpoint exists, but you're just not going to reach it if you're putting CR up on turn 160.
It's an interesting game because there are a lot of variables; it's maddening because AI cash output matters a great deal, and you never know what you're going to get there.