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You are confusing too many things. "10" is the representation of a data; "0xA" is another representation of the same data. Not being able to touch something d

You are confusing too many things. "10" is the representation of a data; "0xA" is another representation of the same data. Not being able to touch something doesn't make it an abstraction. Light is not an abstraction, a contract is not an abstraction. 10 is not an abstraction, it is an ordinal [1]. "Isomorphism" is an abstraction. It doesn't name a particular data or value, but a class of functions that share common properties. A function template or functions written in a dynamically typed language can describe a particular group of isomorphism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_natural_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_na...

29athrowaway 2y ago
Number notations and the glyphs and conventions used in them are abstractions. 10 in a database record of a warehouse system may be an abstraction for 10 items of a given type in a warehouse.
JadeNB 2y ago
> Light is not an abstraction, a contract is not an abstraction. 10 is not an abstraction, it is an ordinal [1]. It seems to me that all of those things very much are abstractions. They are not the utmost level of abstraction, but they are abstractions! (Actually "a contract," which at first I thought was the clearest win, I'm now not sure about. On reflection, it seems like a concretization, turning abstract ideas of trust and reliability into concrete conditions under which the contract has or has not been met.)
- astrobe_ 2y ago
  All right, light is an abstraction, contracts are abstractions, 10 is an abstraction, time is an abstraction, and I am an abstraction too. The notion is so fuzzy that everything can be an abstraction in a certain way. The word "abstraction" is a black hole for thoughts. Stay away from it. For instance in this threads and in TFA, people made useful distinctions such as "generalization" or "indirection".

29athrowaway 2y ago

Number notations and the glyphs and conventions used in them are abstractions. 10 in a database record of a warehouse system may be an abstraction for 10 items of a given type in a warehouse.

JadeNB 2y ago

> Light is not an abstraction, a contract is not an abstraction. 10 is not an abstraction, it is an ordinal [1]. It seems to me that all of those things very much are abstractions. They are not the utmost level of abstraction, but they are abstractions! (Actually "a contract," which at first I thought was the clearest win, I'm now not sure about. On reflection, it seems like a concretization, turning abstract ideas of trust and reliability into concrete conditions under which the contract has or has not been met.)

astrobe_ 2y ago
All right, light is an abstraction, contracts are abstractions, 10 is an abstraction, time is an abstraction, and I am an abstraction too. The notion is so fuzzy that everything can be an abstraction in a certain way. The word "abstraction" is a black hole for thoughts. Stay away from it. For instance in this threads and in TFA, people made useful distinctions such as "generalization" or "indirection".