Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

graphicallinearalgebra.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 79 posts

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#31

Post by laingc »

casion wrote: post #25
laingc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if there are more than a handful, but I often wonder the same thing about posts about systems programming and, well, basically anything that mentions Rust in the title. For my own part, I find this kind of post fairly easy to digest, but that's almost certainly because I'm a Mathematician by training (PhD in numerical differential geometry, but did a lot of abstract algebra as an undergraduate). To m…

I see. I'm coming from the other side. I do microcontroller and embedded development. This post is basically Ancient Greek to me, as you put it. I think I largely became curious since "these types of posts" tend to be highly ranked with relatively few comments, yet they still show up frequently. I'm also surrounded by a large number of varying types of programmers and engineers, and I get to hear evangelizing and dis…

It's worth mentioning that I come to HN explicitly searching for a mix of interesting reading in my field(s) and Ancient Greek. I think it's super important for me as a mathematician working in technology to try and understand what clever people in other fields find interesting and important. I don't understand it in any sort of depth, and I don't expect myself to. I would imagine that a lot of folks from "your side" probably have a similar attitude to mathematics.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#32

Post by acchow »

tikhonj wrote: post #12
casion wrote: post #2

Are there really that many people on NH that can understand this? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm legitimately interested. It seems like this class of knowledge is highly specialized, yet I see posts like these high up on NH frequently.

I work at Target and we have a weekly class on algebra, category theory and Haskell because people are interested. It's a mix of programmers learning some of the math and mathematicians learning some of the programming :). It's actually a lot more accessible than it seems at first—these ideas are not complex , just abstract. Thinking at a high level of abstraction is very much a skill which requires specific training…

  I work at Target and we have a weekly class on algebra, category theory and Haskell because people are interested
Wow, Target sounds like it has a nerdier crowd than Facebook.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#33

Post by posterboy »

IgorPartola wrote: post #22
BucketSort wrote: post #18

I've been studying Leibniz recently and I'm excited to get to his treatment of Monads. The following is a little irrelevant to this post, but the title of this post stirred a relationship. So to Leibniz, in the conception of an entity's identity, he posits that one must include all propositions related to that entity. So when we try to consider a property of an object of our mind, we are basically saying "it is what…

If god was all powerful, he could create a rock he himself could not lift. If god was all knowing, he could create a cryptosystem he himself could not break. God is a bad measure of physical properties. Some things are just unknown.

Chuck Norris could create a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it ... and then he would lift it.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#34

Post by yeahGreat »

posterboy wrote: post #33
IgorPartola wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If god was all powerful, he could create a rock he himself could not lift. If god was all knowing, he could create a cryptosystem he himself could not break. God is a bad measure of physical properties. Some things are just unknown.

Chuck Norris could create a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it ... and then he would lift it.

It's not funny anymore.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#35

Post by BucketSort »

tel wrote: post #19
BucketSort wrote: post #18

I've been studying Leibniz recently and I'm excited to get to his treatment of Monads. The following is a little irrelevant to this post, but the title of this post stirred a relationship. So to Leibniz, in the conception of an entity's identity, he posits that one must include all propositions related to that entity. So when we try to consider a property of an object of our mind, we are basically saying "it is what…

Different "monad", unfortunately.

Forgive my ignorance!

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#36

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

carapace wrote: post #28
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #23

In most of the category theory posts on HN I've seen, there's at least one person asking ahead this stuff is useful for. This comment is about why I find it useful. Why I learn this stuff: to more effectively change things about myself. Category Theory is an abstract math of relationships. I use it to better understand how my mind and body work. How parts of me are related in the moment and/or across time. Understand…

Fascinating, are you writing this up anywhere?

Yep. It's mostly notes right now. Luckily, I met someone a few days ago who's going to help me distill my research into something people can easily understand.

The goal is to setup an open source, open participation science experiment for testing my hypotheses at ourfirstmind.com

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#37

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #23

In most of the category theory posts on HN I've seen, there's at least one person asking ahead this stuff is useful for. This comment is about why I find it useful. Why I learn this stuff: to more effectively change things about myself. Category Theory is an abstract math of relationships. I use it to better understand how my mind and body work. How parts of me are related in the moment and/or across time. Understand…

Does anyone have constructive criticism to go along with the downvotes?

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#38

Post by Waterluvian »

casion wrote: post #2

Are there really that many people on NH that can understand this? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm legitimately interested. It seems like this class of knowledge is highly specialized, yet I see posts like these high up on NH frequently.

I love pure programming. But the thing that makes me hesitant to try to learn something like Haskell is that it feels like I need a math degree to understand the concepts and terms. For a while I thought I was just not that smart. But I realise that all these things are just kind of really complicated.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#39

Post by the_af »

Waterluvian wrote: post #38
casion wrote: post #2

Are there really that many people on NH that can understand this? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm legitimately interested. It seems like this class of knowledge is highly specialized, yet I see posts like these high up on NH frequently.

I love pure programming. But the thing that makes me hesitant to try to learn something like Haskell is that it feels like I need a math degree to understand the concepts and terms. For a while I thought I was just not that smart. But I realise that all these things are just kind of really complicated.

Learning Haskell, if you just want to hack and build a program, is not really complicated and you don't need a math degree or to be particularly smart. You just need to understand it won't be like writing other languages you learned before. That doesn't make it more difficult, just different.

Re: A monoid is a category, a category is a monad, a monad is a monoid

#40

Post by Waterluvian »

the_af wrote: post #39
Waterluvian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love pure programming. But the thing that makes me hesitant to try to learn something like Haskell is that it feels like I need a math degree to understand the concepts and terms. For a while I thought I was just not that smart. But I realise that all these things are just kind of really complicated.

Learning Haskell, if you just want to hack and build a program, is not really complicated and you don't need a math degree or to be particularly smart. You just need to understand it won't be like writing other languages you learned before. That doesn't make it more difficult, just different.

Good to know. I think I get too into my head when reading about it all. Monads? Monoids? Functors? Oh my!

Edit: thank you all for your wonderfully encouraging and useful responses. I know what I'm playing with tonight!!!

Post reply on HN