NIPS & double blind reviewing

[Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi]

I have had my fair share of accepted and rejected papers. So, I speak out of
experience. When your paper is rejected it hurts. You worked hard and you get
canned with some dismissing comments. It hurts. So, thank god, we have a
resource that helps us not to hang ourselves at the nearest post. Conspiracy
theories. If you are young and unknown: the paper was rejected because you
dont  belong to that old boys network. If you are more seasoned and famous:
the paper was rejected because evidently the reviewer hates my guts. Both way
it hurts. But it is far better than: my paper was rejected because it was a
bunch of bull.  Which comes right before suicide.
True, reviewers are human. But there is something funny about human perception
of human behavior. We are all absolutely convinced of being  fair. I do not
know of a single person that, when asked about her/his ability to exercise
fair judgment will say: when I review a paper I dont really mind the quality,
what count are my preexisting feelings about the author. Nobody says or thinks
so. But we all are more than willing to assume that our colleagues do just
this.
Perhaps (or certainly) there is some bias when it comes to reviewing. It is a
human thing, after all. Double blinding seems to be just a tenuous band-aid.
It may give the impression that the problem has been fixed (if there is really
a problem). But this can make the process even more misleading. Because, as it
was pointed out by some, in many cases it will simply be impossible to conceal
the identity of the authors. And it will not prevent those devious reviewers
(I mean, not me, the others) from making hypotheses and speculations about the
authors identity and to apply the bias perhaps against the wrong target.
Would this make the process any better?

Cheers

Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi