Special theory of relativity did not come out of nowhere. Neither did the geometry, nor algebra. It was all about humans’ curious mind and joy of exploring what’s “possible” out there.
Hyperlinks on the web are one-directional. But links are much stronger if they're bidirectional. That's possible using backlinks, or in real life, by saying "thank you".
Thank you planet-and-halo for reminding us of the web analogy. Thank you zR0x for relating the abstract maths to tangible reality. Thank you tarxzvf for suggesting that everything is pattern matching (I agree, matter & energy are finite, it's only the connections between them that we can create).
I believe that these connections hold true for dad jokes, social situations, software, maths, physics, chemistry, biology... every created thing. Let's thank our creator, and all the teachers who helped us grow.
Are there under 6 degrees of separation between everything in the universe? Or is it as few as 3.5 degrees? [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...
[1] https://research.fb.com/blog/2016/02/three-and-a-half-degree....
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations open with a list of lessons learned and an attribution.
Just remembered this when I read your nice note about the "thank you" -- for which, and for the ensuing recollection, thank you!
How can it help me reason about reality is the interesting part.
For that, one has to really practice these problems and not just hope to get a FAANG gig writing run of the mill business logic every day.
"Both these properties, predictability and stability, are special to integrable systems... Since classical mechanics has dealt exclusively with integrable systems for so many years, we have been left with wrong ideas about causality. The mathematical truth, coming from non-integrable systems, is that everything is the cause of everything else: to predict what will happen tomorrow, we must take into account everything that is happening today.
Except in very special cases, there is no clear-cut "causality chain," relating successive events, where each one is the (only) cause of the next in line. Integrable systems are such special cases, and they have led to a view of the world as a juxtaposition of causal chains, running parallel to each other with little or no interference."
- Ivar Ekeland