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by Yhippa 3600 days ago
Just wanted to say thanks for this amazing answer. My statement wasn't worded the best but I feel like you captured the essence of what I was trying to say.

I see things like quantum mechanics and think about how instead of say at the deepest levels of nature that instead of somehow enumerating all the possible positions of an electron or particle it was more efficient to somehow make it probabilistic. Likewise for things like fractals instead of having a ridiculously high-degree polynomial function you have a simple polar function or the examples in the article that make elegant designs from a simple formula.

I am rambling at this point but I appreciate your links. I already went down the rabbit hole on the Wikipedia ones.

As an aside when I took a MSCS class in cryptography I had to refresh on set theory and remember enjoying that and I guess is what got me thinking about these types of things again.

1 comments

I've been thinking about something to recommend, since it's a bit ridiculous to end a relativistic exposition without settling the uncertainty into some new, interesting starting point.

Minimum description length might be just the right place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Description-Principle-Adaptive-Comput...

Alternately, generating functions.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generating_function

[3] https://www.amazon.com/generatingfunctionology-Third-Herbert...

Alternately alternately, various categorical notions.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realizability

[5] http://stijnvermeeren.be/download/mathematics/essay.pdf

[6] https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/locally+presentable+categories...

[7] https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/groupoid+cardinality

Alternately alternately alternately, foundational madness of the best kind.

[8] http://www.forkinganddividing.com/

[9] https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spot-Lectures-Logic/dp/30371908...