Digifesto

I submitted an abstract to IC2S2 this year. It was a risky abstract so submit: I was trying to enter into a new field; the extended abstract length was maximum three pages; I had some sketches of an argument in mind that were far too large in scope and informed mainly by my dissatisfaction with other fields.

I got the most wonderful negative review from an anonymous reviewer. A careful dissection of my roughshod argument and firm pointers to literature (some of it quite old) where my naive intuitions had already been addressed. It was a brief and expertly written literature review of precisely the questions that I had been grasping at so poorly.

There have been moments in my brief research career where somebody has stepped in out of the blue and put be squarely on the right path. I can count them on one hand. This is one of them. I have enormous gratitude towards these people; my gratitude is not lessened by the anonymity of this reviewer. Likely this was a defining moment in my mental life. Thank you, wherever you are. You’ve set a high bar and one day I hope to pay that favor forward.