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Comment by osrec

7 years ago

It supports so many use cases primarily because of the small number of fundamental "constructs".

I mean, if I gave you protons, electrons and neutrons, you could build the universe out of them!

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osrec

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OJFord  7 years ago

That doesn't make sense, if I give you more things (I'm avoiding saying 'atom', but you know what I mean) then it's not the case that you can suddenly do less.

Expressiveness isn't inversely correlated to number of constructs.

  • osrec  7 years ago

    Let's say you gave me an atom. In this situation, you can't create other atoms. When you give me protons, electrons and neutrons, I can create any atom I like, in addition to anything else in the universe. Thus, when you give me an atom, you actually reduce the possibilities somewhat.

    In reality, it's not just about the small number of constructs, but also about how fundamental they are. In one sense, atoms are less fundamental than protons/neutrons/electrons, and therefore reduce the number of possible creations.

    • xelxebar  7 years ago

      I think your premise might be flawed.

      Are we just assuming that protons and neutrons automatically pull in the quarks, neutrinos, other leptons and force carriers as well? Does the electron have a photon dependency? What about dark matter?

      If not, then the our three particles are internally inconsistent and woefully incapable of building a universe. Otherwise, our set of dependencies is essentially the whole darn universe anyway.

      Same goes for atoms. Give me enough and I can build a star or particle accelerator to create whatever elements or fundamental particles I want.

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    • vageli  7 years ago

      > Let's say you gave me an atom. In this situation, you can't create other atoms. When you give me protons, electrons and neutrons, I can create any atom I like, in addition to anything else in the universe. Thus, when you give me an atom, you actually reduce the possibilities somewhat.

      > In reality, it's not just about the small number of constructs, but also about how fundamental they are. In one sense, atoms are less fundamental than protons/neutrons/electrons, and therefore reduce the number of possible creations.

      I think what OJFord is getting at is, what if you had more subatomic particles to build with?

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