Category - Patterns

This is the patterns category page. Check backlinks.

Thinking in graphs and patterns

I read a Carl Sagan quote once, which I cannot find again so it's very possible that he never said this but anyways it resonated with me. Paraphrased, it was something like

If you keep seeing the same patterns in vastly different circumstances, then you could be witnessing a deeper truth about the universe.

This quote is also related to abstraction.

Here are some of my collected patterns. Most of them I don't understand in all their depth, but this is an ever-evolving wiki. Check the backlinks for a full list.

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Our brains are pattern-recognizers. If you want to think better, you might want to recognize better patterns.

But what is a pattern?

The structuralists would argue it's an abstract structure defined in terms of what it's not (ex. what is a tree? it is a not-bush, not-mountain, not-bright red, etc.)

The poststructuralists might argue that this not-something line of thought is infinite and leads to eating itself. They might be right.

In any case, connections are just as important as the things themselves. Put another way, links are first-class citizens, and should be treated as such.