A question: where does math sit in relation to the ecology of “premium mediocrity”? Are there premium mediocre math concepts? String theory seems to be a premium mediocre physics concept, striving to become a RealTheory of science. Does math have any PM analogs?
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I suspect category theory is PM math.
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Prove me wrong? I’m probably an easy convert. I know very little about it. Read one chapter of a text 20y ago and decided the machinery was not worth the insight payoff. Snap judgment that I never revisited.
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i mean there are a lot of big serious payoffs but whether you care about those payoffs depends strongly on whether you care about fields like algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, topos theory etc. they're not super "down-to-earth" i guess
Yeah I guess I’m pretty down to earth. I only like those fields where they touch everyday intuitions a bit.
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I am not good enough at programming or category theory, but apparently there are practical applications:
"category theory is a treasure trove of extremely useful programming ideas"
bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/cat
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One can care about say a branch of algebraic topology even if there aren’t any apparent applications now. Because there may be in the *future* - and often in math there are. Eg. knot theory. But we can also care for aesthetic reasons - it’s wondrous. Is wonder precluded from PM?
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There’s this joke about globetrotter algebra in Futurama cc.com/video-clips/7u
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