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tikhonjtoday at 12:18 AM0 repliesview on HN

Reminds me of my favorite math essay: "When is one thing equal to some other thing?"

It's a great question, much deeper and more interesting than it seems. The essay suggests thinking in terms of isomorphisms (relative to the structure you care about) rather than equality in some absolute sense, and I've found a fuzzy version of that to be a really useful perspective even in areas that can't be fully formalized.

https://people.math.osu.edu/cogdell.1/6112-Mazur-www.pdf