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This is a lovely friday morning diversion. I won't comment on the mathematical content, since the article did such an enjoyable job, but I do want to call out t

This is a lovely friday morning diversion. I won't comment on the mathematical content, since the article did such an enjoyable job, but I do want to call out this slightly tangential quote: > Could it be that I’m the first person ever to notice the curious properties of twin tweens? No. I am past the age of entertaining such droll thoughts, even transiently. If I have not found any references, it’s doubtless because I’m not looking in the right places. Ever since I read Neal Stephenson's Anathem, this idea has stuck with me. Especially in regards to questions about who deserves the glory for creating/popularizing things first. Vanishingly few ideas are new, and that's okay. Journey, not destination, yada yada... What a fun write-up.

ur-whale 5y ago
> If I have not found any references, it’s doubtless because I’m not looking in the right places. This is one increasingly frustrating aspect of math and so-called hard sciences in general: there is an explosion of content since - say - the 18th century that it has become increasingly hard to actually find if and where there exists published work on a specific topic. Google is of course a tremendous help, but: a) the web has not yet absorbed all scientific literature: between walled gardens and stuff that hasn't been scanned yet, content is still hard to get to or even index b) different scientific fields are often busy re-inventing the wheel, assigning their own jargon to the same underlying concepts, leading to a rather confusing landscape. In the "old days", we had librarians, folks who could guide you towards that elusive piece of knowledge you desperately needed. Wishful thinking: I believe a new academic discipline to classify, organize and index scientific knowledge (I'm aware of existing systems - they are lacking, as exemplified by this article), including missionary-style undertaking to try and convince different branch of sciences to gently and slowly converge towards a uniform language for scientific knowledge.
- jedberg 5y ago
  We still have librarians and they can still guide you towards nirvana. As my librarian friend puts it, she got a master's degree in googling better than everyone else.
redis_mlc 5y ago
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ur-whale 5y ago

> If I have not found any references, it’s doubtless because I’m not looking in the right places. This is one increasingly frustrating aspect of math and so-called hard sciences in general: there is an explosion of content since - say - the 18th century that it has become increasingly hard to actually find if and where there exists published work on a specific topic. Google is of course a tremendous help, but: a) the web has not yet absorbed all scientific literature: between walled gardens and stuff that hasn't been scanned yet, content is still hard to get to or even index b) different scientific fields are often busy re-inventing the wheel, assigning their own jargon to the same underlying concepts, leading to a rather confusing landscape. In the "old days", we had librarians, folks who could guide you towards that elusive piece of knowledge you desperately needed. Wishful thinking: I believe a new academic discipline to classify, organize and index scientific knowledge (I'm aware of existing systems - they are lacking, as exemplified by this article), including missionary-style undertaking to try and convince different branch of sciences to gently and slowly converge towards a uniform language for scientific knowledge.

jedberg 5y ago
We still have librarians and they can still guide you towards nirvana. As my librarian friend puts it, she got a master's degree in googling better than everyone else.

redis_mlc 5y ago

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