9 ms·
Don't we have enough of these memetic titles? It's hard to go a day without 'X for fun and profit' or 'Y considered harmful'.
by DC-3 6y ago
Don't we have enough of these memetic titles? It's hard to go a day without 'X for fun and profit' or 'Y considered harmful'.
- memexy 6y agoHe's referencing "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by the physicist Eugene Wigner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...). > In the paper, Wigner observed that the mathematical structure of a physical theory often points the way to further advances in that theory and even to empirical predictions. I think it's a good analogy since it applies exactly how Wigner meant it except in this case it is a branch of mathematics being applied to mathematics instead of physics. Representation theory has been "unreasonably useful and effective" which is what the original article was about.
- klyrs 6y agoHi, I'm a woman. We still exist in tech spaces. Please use "they" when you don't know somebody's gender, or "she" for me now that you know. Thanks
- hanche 6y agoIn Frederik Pohl’s The years of the city, gendered pronouns are completely gone. Instead of he or she, there is “e”. His/her is “er”, and him/her is “um”. Too bad it didn’t catch on.
- memexy 6y agoNoted. But I don't pay much attention to user names so if we run into each other again I'm likely to make the same mistake.
- klyrs 6y agoI don't care if you remember me. Remember this. > Please use "they" when you don't know somebody's gender
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hrktb 6y agoWe collectively accepted that titles are supposed to be memetic though. For instance readability is second to shortness. Accuracy is lower priority to impact. Our whole history with titles points to short and punchy catch copies. Purely descriptive titles only work when the reader will read the paper anyway (e.g. peer reviewing), which is far from the setting we have on HN.