I liked reading the Ribbonfarm post on rectangles today. Most rectangles we use are highly unnatural, forming a simple category of things to avoid during a Sabbath. Packaged/processed food, books, electronics, credit cards.
I’m simultaneously really drawn to the idea of a culture that has special non-rectangle-day to disconnect from modernity, but then immediately imagining this extrapolated a couple hundred years until you get the sort of thing where, much like some Orthodox Jews have elevators continuously running so they can use them, people start inventing hexagonal computers and ID cards and whatnot.
i.e. maybe this is a useful heuristic to think about, but it’d get Goodheart Law’d real quick, so to remain an interesting insight it needs to *not* get popularized too much.
I liked reading the Ribbonfarm post on rectangles today. Most rectangles we use are highly unnatural, forming a simple category of things to avoid during a Sabbath. Packaged/processed food, books, electronics, credit cards.
Aaaaah once I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it.
I’m simultaneously really drawn to the idea of a culture that has special non-rectangle-day to disconnect from modernity, but then immediately imagining this extrapolated a couple hundred years until you get the sort of thing where, much like some Orthodox Jews have elevators continuously running so they can use them, people start inventing hexagonal computers and ID cards and whatnot.
i.e. maybe this is a useful heuristic to think about, but it’d get Goodheart Law’d real quick, so to remain an interesting insight it needs to *not* get popularized too much.
Related: roundrects.