This words feel like deeply rooted in my subconscious such that I didn't even try to be humble. It was also today, the same friend asked me to go for a walk, and asked me 'Do you love doing research?' I said, 'I do.' But I added 'I also want fame and fortune, or fame plus a descent life. I believe everyone who does research wants to make a name.'
I have been grateful to have known the friend, who is a genius guy since very young. As usual, I have been friendly and open-minded in a new place, but refrain myself from intentionally making friends. I always believe, if you are really the same type of people, sooner or later you will become very close. It turns out we become very close after some time, and we talk a lot about anything, from pure research to rumors of scientists, and most of all, our excitement and frustration after long day's work.
He often asks 'How's your idol?' He is talking about Feifei Li, the Stanford Professor in AI. I have been a long-term fan of Feifei, and everyone around me knows it. It is very hard to explain why. But there are always mysterious chemicals between people. Just like the chemicals existing between Feifei, he, my genius college friend who is now going through painstaking life in Europe and me.
Research is never a world of any particular ethics. There is more emphasis on school name and your lineage than anywhere else. This year, if you are a PhD student at stanford working with Stephen Boyd, you will be invited to the job talk even with just one first-author paper on your resume. This is more reasonable than it sounds, as most of the research can hardly produce any immediate revenues. More likely it is just a game of intelligence and publication. Governments and companies pay you to play meaningless brain-teaser, such that they would hope you are having a good title to justify this. In this sense, no title is better than "MIT/Stanford/Berkerly/CMU" if you work on computer science (I tend to glorify computer science comparing with other subjects mostly because I love it).
But all these dark corners should not stop anyone who is really passionate about the game from participating. The world is far from perfect, and it's already lucky that you know it's deficient rule. I play this game because I believe some day I can win the ticket to join the real match, and after entering the arena, I can be a rising star and really make a name (of course, plus a descent life when I can play with Emacs, Linux and Latex as much as I want). But it is also possible I will not be able to get a ticket even if I am no less good than all the players out there. Which is fine. A man will eventually learn to make peace and shake hands with life, letting go of his young ambition and living on.
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