Salad Theory

(saladtheory.github.io)

37 points | by colinprince 2 days ago

16 comments

  • recursivecaveat 5 minutes ago
    I enjoy this kind of thing. I definitely take objection to their entropy argument though. A cheeseburger with like 5 ingredients stacked into layers is not in the same entropy universe as a salad with hundreds of little leaves and chunks of food in a big pile. Criticizing the cube model on the basis that eating the food can change the category seems a little silly when even they would admit that a salad eaten down to just a singular crouton is no longer a salad.
  • tshaddox 33 minutes ago
    I’m fine with their first consideration:

    > A salad must be a mixture of greens.

    The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively. There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?

  • CSMastermind 36 minutes ago
    > Mathematics is the study of precisely imagined things. It's about imagining something so precisely that your idea of it is fully defined. There's no space for opinion or interpretation. Two mathematicians thinking about the same mathematical object, defined in the same way, are not thinking about two versions of it. They're actually thinking about the same object.

    - Rob Miles

    Any time I read something like this post, I can't help but think that it's people mimicking the language of mathematics because they don't understand its purpose. To them, math seems like pedantry, constantly obsessing about minor details that are seemingly irrelevant. When in reality, that obsession with full and complete definitions in math serves a purpose.

    This discussion of salads serves no purpose. In fact, it's arguably meant to be confusing.

  • EagnaIonat 11 minutes ago
    Reminds me of the Every pizza place salad.

    https://youtu.be/JgJUbmGDc6k?si=CvS6vuBU5R5JwoDg&t=10

  • Vishal_Max 19 minutes ago
    Never thought someone would actually spend time applying math to salads and creating theorems out of them. Appreciate the effort put into this.
  • tigermafia 43 minutes ago
    Today I am especially grateful that I work with cool people.
  • telesilla 18 minutes ago
    I refer to the Spanish definition of "ensalada": La ensalada es, en términos generales, un plato que combina verduras frías - a salad is a plate which combines cold vegetables.

    Thus pizza, in Spanish, is not a salad, until about an hour after it comes out of the oven.

  • wcfrobert 18 minutes ago
    Yes, pizza, after intense and scrupulous reasoning, is indeed a salad.

    This goes to proves that you can reason your way out of everything.

  • devhunt-org 19 minutes ago
    If a salad can become soup depending on how much dressing you add, where do you think the actual boundary is?
  • Sebastian_09 41 minutes ago
    You have to be able to toss a salad for it to be a salad, no? They tried too hard to make pizza salad…
    • kijin 4 minutes ago
      Anything can be tossed if you apply enough force.
  • shelldon42 56 minutes ago
    Yeah, sometimes a feature-rich salad just turns into a mess. Less is more with ingredients.
  • lucianmarin 1 hour ago
    If you apply information theory to food and get some interesting results. https://github.com/lucianmarin/fit
    • balazspeczeli 46 minutes ago
      What was your prompt for this? Can you please share the chat history?
  • smaileri 31 minutes ago
    Gosh, people in comments are so annoying. I find all the efforts put in formulating a salad theory rather amusing, frankly.
  • 0xbadcafebee 41 minutes ago
    An "Italian" from most sub shops definitely qualifies as soup after all the oil and vinegar. I almost drowned once trying to eat a Subway Italian BMT.
  • jdw64 1 hour ago
    By this standard, I could call myself a vegetarian starting today. Haha
  • Mistletoe 1 hour ago
    pedantry/ˈped(ə)ntrē/

    Pedantry is an excessive, boastful, or annoying focus on minor details, formal rules, and trivial points of learning.

    • balazspeczeli 27 minutes ago
      It's a bit funny that I can replace "pedantry" with "mathematics" here and it still makes sense:

        Mathematics is an excessive, boastful, or annoying focus on minor details, formal rules, and trivial points of learning.