When I built my first professional/academic website, many prominent ML researchers seemed to be transitioning away from maintaining personal blogs to social media. My advisor expressed frequent disappointment that the people she looked up to in the community, her mentors, were not going to be providing insights and perspectives as readily in medium-to-long format any longer. I was grateful that this was happening because I didn’t think that I would have much to say and did not want to feel pressured into regularly publishing my thoughts. I went as far as placing in the README of the github repo hosting the html:
“Personal website to host papers, cv, current projects and potentially , if I lose my mind, a research blog.”
It appears that this time has come, I’ve officially lost my mind. I’m starting a research blog.
Why?
As stated above, I’ve lost my mind, and I want to get it back. I have found it increasingly harder to organize my thoughts; whether that is due to dopamine addiction, trying to keep too many things in my internal context, suffering from a personal affliction of struggling to decline interesting collaborations. In today’s chaotic research environment the ability to clearly articulate oneself has become paramount, as is the importance of establishing one’s voice.
The researchers who I consider to pursue the most compelling and insightful research have maintained a practice of writing regularly. When you speak with them, they are deeply thoughtful and articulate. They take notes of ideas. They ask questions. They remain curious. Any skepticism is largely respectful and humbly expressed. I aspire to be like them. I hope to engender in my own practice similar characteristics and hope to emulate these for future students, co-workers, and mentees.
What’s to come
I don’t have any expectations that my writing will catch much attention. This is almost solely meant to be an exercise for myself and to be a repository for insights that I may refer to later. I do not intend to address (and will likely shy away from) provocative topics but a hot-take or two may slip into my writing time-to-time. Ultimately, I am seeking to build a habit of writing down daily reflections and points of gratitude that will occasionally bubble up into larger pieces to share publicly. The purpose of these blogs is to build back mental and intellectual muscles to better appreciate and refine my ideas, both good and bad.
While most of what I plan to make note of will be professional updates or research focused–highlighting thoughts, progress, and new results from my research in reinforcement learning–there will be times where I feel compelled to share connections I make between my personal faith and my experiences. I deeply believe that what makes a strong researcher is what constitutes their whole person, their whole identity. For me: I am a son of God, I have faith in Christ, I am a father of four delightful kids (occasionally referred to as RL agents; some of whom are already taller than me!), I am a husband of a supportive and loving spouse, and lastly I aspire to be a scientist who happens to be drawn to real-world sequential decision making problems.
See you next time (hopefully soon)!