Comment by xtiansimon
20 days ago
What is a "high-dimensional room"? A "room" is by definition three-dimensional in so far as we're using metaphor for description. Then to add this "high-dimensional" modifier does little for me, since the only visualizable high-dimensional cube is a tesseract, which still leaves you at 4-d.
The presented counterpoint to this metaphor has the "room" change into a "landscape". The room is a "flat void" compared to a landscape with "hills, valleys, and paths". None of these landscape features evoke higher dimensionality in my imagination. Certainly not in the way, say, the metaphor of the "coastline" of Great Britain does when discussing the unusual properties of a fractal.
These moves don't shift my railroad mind from one track onto another. So I wonder, if a metaphoric usage is not in some way universal, how can it be instructive?
The metaphor works only if you already understand the maths.
Maths I’ve never heard of. Possible. Probable. And what you’re saying is the words “room” and “landscape” are _over coded_ to such an extent the natural logic of 3-d rooms and 2-d landscapes are easily overcome by scaffolds of mathematical instruction—such that the latter could be imagined as having *higher* dimensionality than the former, for example? Or whatever other idea orbiting those words counter to their nature. That’s very interesting.