Maybe this would be Dickens' reaction. or more likely the Muppets' one. Be that as it may, when the very idea of doing the things you enjoy becomes tainted by rage and outrage, maybe it's time to think again.
There are many situations in the kind of work that I do that remind me of AYSO under-8 football--or soccer, if you insist. One of the hardest things to pass on to the kids is the need to think like a team: all of them want to be strikers, all of them run in a messy swarm towards the ball, there's no one in the defense, no one positioned to lead a new kind of attack, they can only see where the ball is, this second. Category Theory can feel exactly like that: an awful lot of mental energy gets dissipated in the competition for a few seconds of playing ball. This is not my style, it has never been.
By the way, the picture has nothing to do with these darker thoughts. This was just a warm and fun conversation about "Proofs and Programs", part of the Logic Colloquium session organized by Monika Seisenberg. (my contributed presentation, which was only 20 min, was the same day for me, but the next day in Poland. funny to see the consequences of a round Earth in practical life!)
Congratulations to the Polish organizers of the Logic Colloquium! A huge challenge and they did it all extremely well. Thus I'm hoping to have hybrid versions of the Logic Colloquium henceforth! I'm also looking forward to next year's Logic Colloquium in Reykjavik, Iceland!
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