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The person I replied to said they know what monoid means, so they're familiar with algebra. The explanation is intuitive for someone familiar with undergraduate
by ndriscoll 8d ago
The person I replied to said they know what monoid means, so they're familiar with algebra. The explanation is intuitive for someone familiar with undergraduate algebra (adapted to also assume some familiarity with programming and show how it connects). That's literally where the meme comes from, an intuitive remark from an introductory text on category theory. If you think it's impenetrable, it's not for you. You don't have the correct background, so ignore it.
- adastra22 7d agoIt may have come from an old textbook, but its origin as a meme is a 2009 joke blog post that gets its humor from making fun of how obtuse and pedagogically inept that explanation is. When people reference it today, this is what they are referencing: https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html?m=1 https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...
- ndriscoll 7d agoI'm aware of the meme, but it's not obtuse or pedagogically inept. Like if someone says they're familiar with groups and Fourier transforms, but not what it means to say wavelets are the Fourier basis for the affine group, and I break that down, and you don't know what any of those words mean, that's not me giving an obtuse explanation of wavelets; that's you wandering into the wrong conversation.