7 April 2005 A Paper at CALCO 2005 and Self-Doubt
Today I received the good news that my paper Bisimilarity is not Finitely Based over BPA with Interrupt, co-authored with Wan Fokkink, Anna Ingolfsdottir and Sumit Nain, has been accepted for presentation at CALCO 2005.
Of course, I am happy to have this paper accepted. However, I feel that the paper is the result of the last decent work spell I have had for some time now, and each time I complete some work I have a self-doubting voice inside me that asks: "Is this the last paper you have the stamina to write? Do you have anything more to offer?" In fact, I am not afraid to say that, possibly, the most important reason for me to do some work and write papers every now and then is to keep that voice of self-doubt at bay for a little while.
This reminds me of what Stanislaw Ulam wrote in his classic autobiography Adventures of a Mathematician:
"It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to `try' more than if you are a pessimist."
According to Leon Henkin, Alfred Tarski had a supreme absence of self-doubt that set him apart from most people.
I am a pessimist and have a lot of self-doubt. I guess that the following quotation from Littlewood's A Mathematician's Art of Work is more in line with my psyche:
"Minor depressions will occur, and most of a mathematician's life is spent in frustration, punctuated with rare inspirations."
Last modified: Thursday, 07-Apr-2005 17:24:31 CEST.