I enjoy this kind of thing. I definitely take objection to their entropy argument though. A cheeseburger with like 5 ingredients stacked into layers is not in the same entropy universe as a salad with hundreds of little leaves and chunks of food in a big pile.
The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively. There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
> Mathematics is the study of precisely imagined things. It's about imagining something so precisely that your idea of it is fully defined. There's no space for opinion or interpretation. Two mathematicians thinking about the same mathematical object, defined in the same way, are not thinking about two versions of it. They're actually thinking about the same object.
- Rob Miles
Any time I read something like this post, I can't help but think that it's people mimicking the language of mathematics because they don't understand its purpose. To them, math seems like pedantry, constantly obsessing about minor details that are seemingly irrelevant. When in reality, that obsession with full and complete definitions in math serves a purpose.
This discussion of salads serves no purpose. In fact, it's arguably meant to be confusing.
I refer to the Spanish definition of "ensalada": La ensalada es, en términos generales, un plato que combina verduras frías - a salad is a plate which combines cold vegetables.
Thus pizza, in Spanish, is not a salad, until about an hour after it comes out of the oven.
I enjoy this kind of thing. I definitely take objection to their entropy argument though. A cheeseburger with like 5 ingredients stacked into layers is not in the same entropy universe as a salad with hundreds of little leaves and chunks of food in a big pile.
I’m fine with their first consideration:
> A salad must be a mixture of greens.
The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively. There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
> Mathematics is the study of precisely imagined things. It's about imagining something so precisely that your idea of it is fully defined. There's no space for opinion or interpretation. Two mathematicians thinking about the same mathematical object, defined in the same way, are not thinking about two versions of it. They're actually thinking about the same object.
- Rob Miles
Any time I read something like this post, I can't help but think that it's people mimicking the language of mathematics because they don't understand its purpose. To them, math seems like pedantry, constantly obsessing about minor details that are seemingly irrelevant. When in reality, that obsession with full and complete definitions in math serves a purpose.
This discussion of salads serves no purpose. In fact, it's arguably meant to be confusing.
Reminds me of the Every pizza place salad.
https://youtu.be/JgJUbmGDc6k?si=CvS6vuBU5R5JwoDg&t=10
Never thought someone would actually spend time applying math to salads and creating theorems out of them. Appreciate the effort put into this.
Today I am especially grateful that I work with cool people.
I refer to the Spanish definition of "ensalada": La ensalada es, en términos generales, un plato que combina verduras frías - a salad is a plate which combines cold vegetables.
Thus pizza, in Spanish, is not a salad, until about an hour after it comes out of the oven.
Yes, pizza, after intense and scrupulous reasoning, is indeed a salad.
This goes to proves that you can reason your way out of everything.
If a salad can become soup depending on how much dressing you add, where do you think the actual boundary is?
You have to be able to toss a salad for it to be a salad, no? They tried too hard to make pizza salad…
Anything can be tossed if you apply enough force.
Yeah, sometimes a feature-rich salad just turns into a mess. Less is more with ingredients.
Gosh, people in comments are so annoying. I find all the efforts put in formulating a salad theory rather amusing, frankly.
If you apply information theory to food and get some interesting results. https://github.com/lucianmarin/fit
What was your prompt for this? Can you please share the chat history?
An "Italian" from most sub shops definitely qualifies as soup after all the oil and vinegar. I almost drowned once trying to eat a Subway Italian BMT.
By this standard, I could call myself a vegetarian starting today. Haha
pedantry/ˈped(ə)ntrē/
Pedantry is an excessive, boastful, or annoying focus on minor details, formal rules, and trivial points of learning.
It's a bit funny that I can replace "pedantry" with "mathematics" here and it still makes sense: