Essays and Opinions by Oded Goldreich

last updated: June 2023


Intra-disciplinary position papers

Essays

The following essays (listed in chronological order) can be obtained in either PostScript or PDF:

Short statements of opinions

Etc. (miscellaneous brief comments): On examples, conflict-of-interest, chairing committees, resolving the P-vs-NP Question, 2nd/3rd tier TCS-wide venues, levels of scientific disagreement and/or interest, obsession with originality, the importance of good expositions, answering email requests, concrete challenges, festivals (aka conferences), the role of luck, parallels to art, the futility of careerism, informative citations, errors, ordering publications in one's CV, order of co-authors to a publication, exercises, argumentativeness, languages versus sets, more on parallels to art, on folklore in TOC,


my choices

My impression is that FOCS and STOC do not function any more as forums devoted to the presentation and exchange of ideas (but rather function as "weight-lifting competitions"). A variety of personal webpages, in which researchers present their own choices of (relatively) recent works may be able to partially compensate for this loss. My own contribution to this project appears HERE (starting 2009).


Politics and Academia (esp., in Israel in the 21st century)

The administration of higher-education is part of public politics, but is also part of academic life. Therefore it is debateable whether the standard objections to posting political views on a website maintained by one's host institute should apply here. Anyhow, here are some views regarding the administration of higher-education in Israel in the 21st century.


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