This reminds me of a section from a category theory text that I encountered. It had similarly 'crazy' what-ifs, including one where the author used the quadrat

This reminds me of a section from a category theory text that I encountered. It had similarly 'crazy' what-ifs, including one where the author used the quadratic formula and interpreted some meaning from it. It was a course only text, not distributed outside the university as far as I know.