if we lived in 4 spatial dimensions our cables would never get tangled. really makes you think
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there's this funny anthropic argument that we have to live in at least 3 spatial dimensions because 3 is the minimum number of dimensions in which every finite graph embeds
so 3 is the smallest dimension in which we can arbitrarily hook up e.g. organs, neurons, etc.
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Flatland went to such lengths to make its world seem at all possible
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i've never read it but does the author discuss how like... digestion would work in 2d?
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Yes I think a bit? A lot of time is spent on how distance is perceived since the conceit is not only that its 2d but everyone is convexly polygonal.
In Flatland, the beings are just geometric shapes. In the Planiverse, by contrast, there's a kind of zipper structure that keeps the two sides of biological tubes together.
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