There are situations where one activity receives lower moral judgement than another, such as spending and saving, resting and working, consumption and production, which are actually two sides of the same coin and can only co-exist together.
November 13, 2021
November 12, 2021
Career corner cutting
I have seen people cutting corners and playing little tricks for the sake of advancing their careers, but none of them, even without getting caught, have become very successful.
Maybe they shift their energy away from what they should really focus on, or they are not very confident about their character, ability, or effort.
And once they start on the wrong path, they tend to get caught up in a downward spiral without being able to get back on the right track.
At the end of the day, how we do things matters more than what we have done, and I would prefer achieving a little less than doing something that I know is not right.
November 11, 2021
Award nomination
A few years back, someone asked me to nominate him/her for the SIGGRAPH significant new researcher award. At that time I found the conduct questionable, so I consulted with my PhD adviser, who told me that I should not incur any potential benefits or conflict-of-interests from the nomination. For example, an advisee receiving an award could potentially enhance the reputation of the adviser. A corollary is that the nomination should be anonymous, for which the nominee shouldn’t even be aware of being nominated (not to mention soliciting) as otherwise it is a form of doing favor.
In the end, I still did the nomination due to institutional pressure, but in retrospect I found the entire experience lame, and that person did not win the award anyway.
Today another individual asked me to nominate him/her for a research award, with whom I shared the above story.
I believe someone who deserves an award would not care about it.
I am not following baseball, but the most memorable event in MLB is when Ichiro Suzuki turned down a prestigious award, multiple times.
Research is a fun job if you can handle it
After a company training today a fellow employee from another division pinged me: Are you in the research group? That sounds fun!
Me: Research is a fun job as long as you are comfortable failing 90% of the time. 🙂
November 9, 2021
November 8, 2021
The implications of the physics of time
Time only moves forward.
We cannot change the past or predict the future.
So it is pointless to regret the past or fear the future.
November 7, 2021
With great power comes great hassles
With great power comes great responsibility, but the real trade-off lies in the hassles.
November 6, 2021
Squeezed
A metal tube of lotion that was not properly squeezed from the beginning ended up in a bad shape.
November 3, 2021
Unrealized submission
Yesterday I received some automatic notification about an accepted demo to SIGGRAPH Asia Real-Time Live without realizing that I have a submission there (a co-author of a previous UIST paper made the submission without telling others).
https://twitter.com/liyiwei/status/1455674543930953728
I mentioned this in a group meeting today, and a colleague told me that he has a previous intern who submitted their project without including his name and he found out by a review request for that submission.
🙂
So my case is quite benign in comparison.