4 ms·

> if the reviewers find a good explanation of your result, they'll recommend that you publish in a lower-ranked venue than your result would ordinarily merit (a

> if the reviewers find a good explanation of your result, they'll recommend that you publish in a lower-ranked venue than your result would ordinarily merit (at least unless you solved a famous problem). Even if you solve a well known problem. I gave a talk once where I did so as a very junior student. During the Q&A a very well known senior person got up and basically asked me what's the point and this is all trivial anyway. Thankfully I remembered the exact place where the founder of the entire field had said just recently this is one of the hardest problems in the space and the problem he had hoped to maybe one day get to when he started the entire enterprise. The audience laughed and the guy apologized. But I learned my lesson. Talks and papers need a little magic. For some people you can't just solve a cool problem, they need to think that they couldn't have done so and that they don't quite get how you did it. I now include something in every talk that I don't expect the audience to get just so what I'm doing seems "hard" to people who think this way.

GTP 3y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth: although well motivated, I find the outcome to be unfortunate. In an ideal world, people would appreciate the elegance of a simple solution to a seemingly hard problem. But, as you pointed out, the sad reality is that to some people, if your solution doesn't look hard, it reflects negatively on the importance of your result
- solveit 3y ago
  One problem is that many problems seem easier than they are, and you only find out that they're hard by failing to solve them. I have often wondered how many unremarkable foundational results would be considered major accomplishments if they didn't have the mis(?)fortune of being found by the first person who tried.

GTP 3y ago

Thanks for sharing your experience, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth: although well motivated, I find the outcome to be unfortunate. In an ideal world, people would appreciate the elegance of a simple solution to a seemingly hard problem. But, as you pointed out, the sad reality is that to some people, if your solution doesn't look hard, it reflects negatively on the importance of your result

solveit 3y ago
One problem is that many problems seem easier than they are, and you only find out that they're hard by failing to solve them. I have often wondered how many unremarkable foundational results would be considered major accomplishments if they didn't have the mis(?)fortune of being found by the first person who tried.