@XanderHenderson I was just going to comment here on that one. At first glance yes it is a little tempting to reject it out of hand. But after my reading a few months ago I'm inclined to give it a chance. I've left a comment trying to see if he's willing to actually dig in. It should probably be closed for now, but not rapidly deleted.
@rschwieb I don't know enough category theory to comment, but I get the impression that "category theory" has become a buzzword for crankery in the same way that "quantum" and "fractal" are buzzwords for crankery. It is a phrase that people use without having the slightest notion of what is means.
That post looks like one of those to me. :/
But you'll notice that I neither commented nor closed, as I don't know enough category theory to have a real opinion.
As an aside, I also think that category theory is often far too general a framework. A friend of mine wrote his PhD thesis in category theory. The goal was to view certain kinds of diagrams (spans and cospans) as objects in a "span category". The underlying categories being studied were categories of certain kinds of manifolds (e.g. simplectic and Riemannian manifolds with the appropriate kinds of maps), and the key problem was that these kinds of categories don't admit pullbacks.
So he spent 100 pages building up the right categorical language to construct pullbacks. Which is nifty and all, but it isn't clear that this structure is at all useful beyond the two or three examples that he was working with.
@XanderHenderson Yes, I agree to the extent that there are amateurs feeling an allure for category theory on everything. Certainly the problem has shades of "I like X, I like category theory, there must be some way to apply category theory to X". But OTOH it seems like if you try hard enough, you can apply category theory to anything.
So he has this very, very general language for talking about these kinds of manifolds, but building enough structure into the category in order to actually do work maybe makes the categories so rigid that they don't actually generalize anything.
@rschwieb That's the problem with category theory: it is so general that you can describe anything with it. The problem is saying anything meaningful.
@XanderHenderson Well I'm certain you're among legions of people who feel the same way about category theory, but nevertheless the category theorists have proven their worth somehow
@XanderHenderson I am certain that is almost an exact quote from a famous mathematician :)
@rschwieb Oh, I don't have a problem with category theory as practiced in real mathematics. Like, I think that a lot of researchers over-promise, but I think that the work they do is interesting.
Indeed, I regularly attend a research seminar on mathematical physics in which a couple of category theorists often present their work.
I am not knee-jerk opposed to category theory. I just think that it is a buzzword for cranks.
(Just like "fractal", which is also a buzzword for cranks; but my research area is fractal geometry and analysis on fractals, so I know enough to try to diffuse cranks---I don't have the cat theory to do know the difference between legit work and crankery.)
@XanderHenderson I wasn't suggesting you were. I'm just saying I understand you on those counts. By the way, this is an interesting video to watch: youtube.com/watch?v=WLkMBMUk48E
@XanderHenderson The poster's response to my comments will tell us whether it is too cranky to go on existing.
@XanderHenderson When choosing a duplicate, the chosen should be oldest? or could be the, say, more recent question, which at the same time has more answers and reputation?
@Snaw The problem is not that the remark is suggestive (anyone for whom such a remark might be "harmful" is, I think, not going to even know that it is suggestive; anyone else should be mature enough to ignore it). Also, note that the reference to 69 is not the only suggestive part of the post (there is a pot reference, too). The issue with the question is that it is devoid of context, interest, or any quality which might make it a good question.
@XanderHenderson That's probably true, but consider that OP went out of their way to include suggestive remarks 3 times (including in their answer), so that it might make someone go ahead and search what the whole thing is about.
@XanderHenderson By the way, I see my flag was rejected. The reason I didn't mark it "rude or abusive" is because it didn't contain any profanity per se but only made these silly suggestive remarks.
@Snaw I don't think that any moderator intervention was needed for that post. While I did delete it, delete votes / delete flags should have been sufficient.
@V.R.M. I'll be honest: I don't think that any of those questions are all that great, but I think that this one is probably the best of the bunch.
It includes a definition, whereas the remaining questions provide context by showing "an attempt". I am not a big fan of attempts-as-context.
@V.R.M. I have significantly edited this question in order to make it a "canonical" dupe target. I will close the other questions as duplicates of that question.
