3 ms·

> You cannot zoom into real-life fractals infinitely like in those math animations, only a few times? The point of the paper is that these are not 'real life f

> You cannot zoom into real-life fractals infinitely like in those math animations, only a few times? The point of the paper is that these are not 'real life fractals', so your correct declaration about the obviousness of real life fractals being bounded in their depth is not relevant, and does not make this paper pointless. It's not obvious to me that fern branches are 'anatomically variable and non-iterating bifurcations', rather than a recursive process that bottoms out at a size boundary. Now I know.

JadeNB 3y ago
> It's not obvious to me that fern branches are 'anatomically variable and non-iterating bifurcations', rather than a recursive process that bottoms out at a size boundary. But hardly any (no?) real-life phenomena are the latter! As a mathematician, I'm as bothered by imprecise use of mathematical terminology as anyone, but, if we're going to call anything in real life a fractal, then it surely means something more like "appears to contain structure at multiple scales" than "the same structure at all scales". As @throwbadubadu points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35903049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35903049), the classical example of a coast-line will also have different structure at small scales and at large ones, so either we throw out calling that a fractal (OK with me!), or we accept that we're using precise language imprecisely.
- robotresearcher 3y ago
  Crystals perhaps? Bottom up rather than top down, but locally recursive.
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > Crystals perhaps? Bottom up rather than top down, but locally recursive. Great example!
- CoolGuySteve 3y ago
  There were fractal body plans in the precambrian era but they went extinct pretty quickly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangeomorph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangeomorph
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > There were fractal body plans in the precambrian era but they went extinct pretty quickly. Cool! I didn't know about that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JadeNB 3y ago

> It's not obvious to me that fern branches are 'anatomically variable and non-iterating bifurcations', rather than a recursive process that bottoms out at a size boundary. But hardly any (no?) real-life phenomena are the latter! As a mathematician, I'm as bothered by imprecise use of mathematical terminology as anyone, but, if we're going to call anything in real life a fractal, then it surely means something more like "appears to contain structure at multiple scales" than "the same structure at all scales". As @throwbadubadu points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35903049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35903049), the classical example of a coast-line will also have different structure at small scales and at large ones, so either we throw out calling that a fractal (OK with me!), or we accept that we're using precise language imprecisely.

robotresearcher 3y ago
Crystals perhaps? Bottom up rather than top down, but locally recursive.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > Crystals perhaps? Bottom up rather than top down, but locally recursive. Great example!
CoolGuySteve 3y ago
There were fractal body plans in the precambrian era but they went extinct pretty quickly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangeomorph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangeomorph
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > There were fractal body plans in the precambrian era but they went extinct pretty quickly. Cool! I didn't know about that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]