> I like that you call it the string theory of math. It’s a more modern way of saying “abstract nonsense”. The sociological analogy is a decent one - they're b

> I like that you call it the string theory of math. It’s a more modern way of saying “abstract nonsense”. The sociological analogy is a decent one - they're both ambitious sub-fields of little interest to the average practitioner, with a handful of committed opponents and a wildly overgrown internet hatedom - but their positions in their respective disciplines aren't remotely similar. String theory is a physical theory like any other: pick a spacetime, fill it with dynamical objects, impose some symmetries, and away you go. Category theory, at its most ambitious, wants to be a setting for doing ordinary mathematics in: it belongs in the same general grouping as set theory and higher order logic, not calculus or linear algebra.