Re: A well kept secret

[Dusko Pavlovic <Dusko.Pavlovic@comlab.ox.ac.uk>]

i am wondering why is the public image of category theory so important for
us.

i mean, if category theory is a powerful and useful tool, as it is, then
it should be able to take care for itself. bread does not need
advertising.

i have been with categories for many years. i think in categories, and i
used them in each and every one of my research projects, in every piece of
software that i designed, in every paper that i wrote. but sometimes it is
easier to get to the point without spelling out all definitions in full
generality. and without tackling the opprobium.

e.g., i worked on networks, and have papers about trust networks, and
reputation networks, and recommender systems. a network is a weighted
graph, and it composes to some extent, because a friend of a friend is
almost like a friend, but a friend of a friend of a friend etc, six hops
removed --- is probably not a friend. but you can do with networks a lot
of what you can do with categories: make arrow networks, adjoin
colimits... anyway, i defined all that, and mentioned categories, but did
not really advertise them. was that a mistake? maybe it wasn't such a good
work, and i would have done a disservice to category theory by advertising
it in a bad paper.

i have been using categories in my little crypto modules, and in serious
reduction proofs, for more than 5 years (cryptography is a theory of
functions after all!), but i first gave a crypto talk using categories
last week. and this was not a talk to hard-core cryptographers.

i think category theory sometimes suffers from our advertising. even in a
good paper, advertising is advertising. there are places for that, and
there are places where it is better not to do.

i do understand that we need to take care for the public image of our
work. funding depends on that, hiring depends on that. but maybe we should
clearly state that this is a matter of advocacy and of influence, and not
mix it up with Promoting the Truth. i somehow think that the truth can
take care for itself.

but as always, maybe i am wrong.

-- dusko



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