Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

Re:Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox? by ontouchstart on Saturday February 07, 2026 @07:12AM (#46923227)

There is a third type: rabbit. This is a golden age of rabbit holes. A quick rabbit jumps through complicated holes and tunnels to escape from something or chase something.

We can also call someone chasing a rabbit a fox. Like all the ones chasing LLM agents now.

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Re:Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox? by direwolf20 on Saturday February 07, 2026 @07:24AM (#46923291)

Sounds like the money's in being a rabbit

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Re:Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox? by ontouchstart on Saturday February 07, 2026 @07:50AM (#46923447)

To some extent. Many mathematical breakthroughs are not from mathematicians thinking in the office but mathematical minded people doing engineering work and bumped into big ideas. Mandelbrot was one of them, so was Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, Tony Hoare, …

They are engineers by trade, that is chasing the money as food. But money is not enough for them. So I would call them rabbits instead of foxes.

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