A Research-Mantra is something “cosmic” one believes holds in the area of research at hand. It is then a “pillar of fire” in front that leads the way. The Mantra is to be followed as long as it is not refuted by facts.
In this talk I'll present some Mantras I followed during the years starting with one that says that Distributed-Computing Theory (DCT) is the Mathematical Study of Interleaving. Consequently, DCT researchers should have Mathematical sensibilities rather than Engineering ones. Thus, DCT should poses the beauty of Mathematics, and should not be be “hacked” as an Engineering Domain. In particular any paper that points to “anomalies” or “paradoxes” does not point to faults in the domain but to faults in the thinking of the authors. I'll show some Mantras I use and where they led, and I'll end up with the ramification of recent Mantra that holds that deterministic state-machines capture interleaving as well as message-passing interleaving.