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Came here to say that. People sometimes mistakenly think that numbers or data in computers exist in some meaningful way. Everything in a computer is a model o

Came here to say that. People sometimes mistakenly think that numbers or data in computers exist in some meaningful way. Everything in a computer is a model or record or representation that serves a purpose. All bugs and limits are features.

chriswarbo 3y ago
> People sometimes mistakenly think that numbers or data in computers exist in some meaningful way. That's basically Platonism. I think it's a reasonable position for some things, e.g. Booleans (two-valued logic), natural/integer/rational numbers, tuples, lists, binary trees, etc. I think it's meaningful to talk about, say, the number 2, separately from the way it may be encoded in RAM as a model of e.g. the number of items in a user's shopping cart. This position gets less reasonable/interesting/useful as we consider data whose properties are more arbitrary and less "natural"; e.g. there's not much point separating the "essence" of an IEEE754 double-precision float from its representation in RAM; or pontificating about the fundamental nature of a InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState[0] The question in the article is whether lambda calculus is "natural" enough to be usefully Platonic. It's certainly a better candidate than, say, Javascript; although I have a soft spot for combinatory logic (which the author has also created a binary encoding for; although its self-interpreter is slightly larger), and alternatives like concatenative languages, linear combinators (which seem closer to physics), etc. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160818035145/http://www.javafind.net/gate.jsp?q=%2Flibrary%2F36%2Fjava6_full_apidocs%2Fcom%2Fsun%2Fjava%2Fswing%2Fplaf%2Fnimbus%2FInternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160818035145/http://www.javafi...
- addaon 3y ago
  > InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState In Plato's allegory of the cave, this was the true monster casting shadows on the wall.

chriswarbo 3y ago

> People sometimes mistakenly think that numbers or data in computers exist in some meaningful way. That's basically Platonism. I think it's a reasonable position for some things, e.g. Booleans (two-valued logic), natural/integer/rational numbers, tuples, lists, binary trees, etc. I think it's meaningful to talk about, say, the number 2, separately from the way it may be encoded in RAM as a model of e.g. the number of items in a user's shopping cart. This position gets less reasonable/interesting/useful as we consider data whose properties are more arbitrary and less "natural"; e.g. there's not much point separating the "essence" of an IEEE754 double-precision float from its representation in RAM; or pontificating about the fundamental nature of a InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState[0] The question in the article is whether lambda calculus is "natural" enough to be usefully Platonic. It's certainly a better candidate than, say, Javascript; although I have a soft spot for combinatory logic (which the author has also created a binary encoding for; although its self-interpreter is slightly larger), and alternatives like concatenative languages, linear combinators (which seem closer to physics), etc. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160818035145/http://www.javafind.net/gate.jsp?q=%2Flibrary%2F36%2Fjava6_full_apidocs%2Fcom%2Fsun%2Fjava%2Fswing%2Fplaf%2Fnimbus%2FInternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160818035145/http://www.javafi...

addaon 3y ago
> InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState In Plato's allegory of the cave, this was the true monster casting shadows on the wall.