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One of the reasons I didn’t get far in math is that though I was good at the raw skills like manipulating trigonometric identities or differentiation or Laplace transform mechanics, I never developed a ā€œtasteā€ for how to wield the important and charismatic theorems/equations.
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Things like the CHT or say the Brouwer fixed-point theorem are like temperamental tools with strong ā€œpersonalitiesā€ (think soldering iron) that give you superpowers once you master them. I’m citing these because they are among the few I *did* gain some literacy in.
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By contrast, I gave up on topology after the first grad course because it is just *full* of such things. Topology is the ā€œfantastic beasts and where to find themā€ part of math. Really advanced stamp collecting. If I understand correctly, Grothendieck was a sort of Newt Scamander.
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I’m possibly doing an injustice to music and martial arts here, but I think they’re closer to Euclidean geometry than engineering. As in, the combinatorial space covers most of it, and what isn’t covered is more subconsciously/tacitly learnable.
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Replying to @vgr
You're selling music a little short here. There may be only 12 tones, but the true building blocks are a multitude of combinatorial complexity.
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While there’s stuff beyond the combinatorial space of scales/ragas etc, it it’s mostly tacit. Things like instrument-specific timbre and elements like microtones (raga musicians in particular go on and on about that and entire schools rest on microtonal aesthetic theories)…
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Fair enough… I imagine you might suddenly run into a particular weird ā€œnew physicsā€ effect while experimenting with a particular combination of formal scale/instrument/microtonal flourishes. Often those are what I personally like best in music. New emergent effects.
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Replying to @vgr
Maybe complex rhythm or polyrhythms or something are like the thermistor of music. It seems like there's always a new concept that can radically change the boundaries of somewhere you thought was your back garden.
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I can believe it. I have a suspicion that kata is bullshit work. Practicing basic combinations/drill (kihon) and sparring (kumite) make sense, but kata never made sense to me. I gave up karate after a year in grade school because they only did kata and it bored me to tears.
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Replying to @vgr
if you read bruce lee he points out that katas are just as bad in martial arts
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Come to think of it, this may also be why I never pursued music. My tabla teacher had me doing kata-like drills for years and I never got to accompaniment performance (the equivalent of sparring) while some friends in more musical families were learning accompaniment from day 1.
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Maybe conclusion from this thread is that kata/etude like things don’t just fail in engineering, but they don’t even really work where they are common by tradition. Probably overstating the case, but why not. Null hypothesis: all kata-like things are bullshit work. Any defenders?
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I’m tempted to connect kata like things to pattern language type ideas and call bullshit on that too, since they’re clearly cousins. But I don’t want to be murdered by the Christopher Alexander mafia šŸ˜†
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Friction is real action, flow is self-indulgence? šŸ¤”
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Replying to @rhettford and @vgr
I’ve even seen this in software where folks become so adapted to their mature project that remembering how to compile a quick snippet to test out an idea creates real friction. Friction means you’ll search for a different way.
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The problem here is that there’s no real value to repeating the exercise. It’s a one-time thing, and doing it again or even on a new board doesn’t do much. The essence of kata is repetition. I don’t think anybody would do 100s or 1000s of led-blink or hello-world programs.
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Replying to @vgr
Would a simple exercise like plugging an LED and resister into a breadboard and making it blink with an Arduino count as a Kata? I think it’s real easy to get lost in specialization and forget how to start something from scratch.
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