I see what you're saying and think it makes sense in a physics context where things like cellular automata could represent some important aspect of mathematics/

I see what you're saying and think it makes sense in a physics context where things like cellular automata could represent some important aspect of mathematics/physics that we only barely understand. On the coding side I think abstraction has pros/cons. Yes it is nice to just use a module without really needing to peek behind the scenes, but there is an elegant way to abstract things (think of Linux commands as simple compiled applications that absorb and emit text that can be chained together with pipes versus the nodeJS leftpad fiasco. The latter showed that a lot of packages were just hacked together in a web. Again, contrast the original Smalltalk implementation of IDE, compiler, word processor, games, graphics, audio, networking...etc, that had a good bit of what Windows can do in 10k loc versus Windows which has an order of magnitude of additional code in just Microsoft Word alone. Clearly we've been abusing abstraction as these systems are beyond anyone's understanding when that doesn't need to be so. Chuck Moore of FORTH fame has a great interview where he points out that an OS is a non-thing that shouldn't be as critical as it is. I don't think he is 100% right, but he is onto something.