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This article reminds me of a couple of things. 1. Wasn't Feynman the one who was promoting replacing classical mechanics with relativity for freshman physics?
by mybrid 10y ago
This article reminds me of a couple of things.
1. Wasn't Feynman the one who was promoting replacing classical mechanics with relativity for freshman physics? How has that turned out?
2. Fuzzy logic makes a similar argument. Bart Kowasaki down in San Diego I believed proved mathematically that fuzzy logic equates Calculus and Nyquist equations. I'm probably not getting that quite right. But, Fuzzy Logic was called the "cocaine of math" and yet the Japanese have done quite well in using fuzzy math in software and manufacturing. The arguments put forth here about why every developer should learn category theory smack of the same arguments that have been made about Fuzzy logic and why fuzzy math should be taught in elementary school. I personally like and use fuzzy logic for programming but wide spread adoption of fuzzy logic never took hold. From what I've read of Category Theory, Fuzzy Logic seems to have a better argument as a programming shift because Fuzzy is a lot less abstract. Just start with a bunch of if statements that approximate the math.
- theoh 10y agoFuzzy logic is good for fuzzy things. Dealing with nature, in the widest sense of the term. Category theory is good for making extremely watertight conceptual arguments for discrete properties being preserved under transformations: it's "general abstract nonsense", yes (a famous characterization of the subject) but it really does elucidate the underlying structures in common across a lot of different mathematical settings. If there's something wrong with the computational flavour of category theory, it's probably that it lacks fuzziness and is too much part of the linguistic/logical picture of the world. Giuseppe Longo, a category theorist, has a paper about this: http://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/files/PhilosophyAndCognition/CritiqCompReason-engl.pdf http://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/files/PhilosophyAndCognitio...
- mybrid 10y agoThanks! for the paper reference!