Essays and Opinions by Oded Goldreich

last updated: June 2023

Intra-disciplinary position papers

On Teaching the Basics of Complexity Theory, February 2005.
Contemplations on testing graph properties, July 2005.
Another motivation for reducing the randomness complexity of algorithms, Nov. 2006.
On Post-Modern Cryptography, Nov. 2006.
On the philosophical basis of computational theories, Feb. 2014.

Essays

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

Critique of some trends in the TCS community, 1991.
Theory of Computation: A Scientific Perspective, 2001 (with A. Wigderson).
On our duties as scientists, March 2004 (rev. Aug. 2009).
How to write a paper, March 2004.
(This is an augmented version of the essay How NOT to write a paper, written in 1991, revised in 1996.)
Demystifying the Master Thesis and Research in General: The Story of Some Master Theses, Jan.2007.
On the status of intellectual values in TOC, Nov. 2011.
On Struggle and Competition in Scientific Fields, Jan. 2012.
On Intellectual and Instrumental Values in Science, Apr. 2012.
On Scientific Evaluation and its relation to Understanding, Imagination, and Taste, May 2012.
Lessons from Kant: On Knowledge, Morality, and Beauty, June 2012.
Content-Oblivious Quality Measures and the Control of Academia, July 2015.

Short statements of opinions

On Resolving the P vs NP Problem (or, on checking claims of resolving famous open problems), an old undated post.
On TCS Conferences [fragments], 1997.
On the role of program committees (and their operation), 1999.
On graduate studies, 2001.
Comments on the nature of TCS research, 2002.
On awards (theory and practice), 2002 and 2004.
On the role of journals, 2003.
On Quantum Computing, 2004.
Some suggestions to program committees, 2004.
On "rejection", 2006.
On the term "provable security", 2006.
On Conceptual Contributions in Theory, joint statement by ten TCS-ists, March 2008.
On the evaluation of scientific work, 2008.
What's currently wrong with STOC/FOCS, 2009.
Where to submit (i.e., to which conference and/or journal), 2009.
Why I refuse to take part in internet discussions, 2010 [in Hebrew, English extracts] Add'l comments (in Hebrew).
A letter to CACM editor regarding computational complexity, 2010.
On Weber's 1919 essay "Science as a Vocation", 2011.
On conferences versus journals, 2011.
On talking about the ``Laws of Nature'', 2011.
Why do people become and remain scientists, Dec. 2011.
On offering advice to aspiring scientists, Dec. 2011.
On theory vs practice in CS, Jan. 2012.
On Understanding, Discussing, and Arguing (or on my reservations regarding blog comments), Jan. 2012.
On Disagreeing, Feb. 2012.
On Modest, Suggestive, and Imposing Theories (and Fields), Apr. 2012.
About myself (information rather than opinions), May 2012.
On the personal, cultural, and political aspect of LGBT, June 2012.
Research-Life Stories (also not exactly opinions), Feb 2013.
On intellectual passion and its unfortunate confusion with sexual passion (and how it may relate to issues of gender), Apr. 2013.
On Cryptographic Assumptions, Dec. 2013.
What is more fundamental than a bit?, Mar. 2014.
On the closure of Microsoft-Research Silicon Valley Lab, Sept. 2014.
On the emotional difficulty of conducting research, Sept. 2014.
On chaging the format of STOC, May 2015.
TCS = TOC + TOP, May 2015.
More on bad attitudes that gain dominance in TOC, July 2016.
On External and Internal Goods in Science, April 2017.
Why is anonymous submission a bad idea, Sept. 2017.
A Call for Reducing the Cost of the Job Search (in the US), June 2023.

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.

Back to Oded Goldreich's homepage or to General list of Oded Goldreich's papers