“Cancer has a surprising amount of detail” by Abhishaike Mahajan

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

There is a very famous essay titled ‘Reality has a surprising amount of detail’. The thesis of the article is that reality is filled, just filled, with an incomprehensible amount of materially important information, far more than most people would naively expect. Some of this detail is inherent in the physical structure of the universe, and the rest of it has been generated by centuries of passionate humans imbibing the subject with idiosyncratic convention. In either case, the detail is very, very important. A wooden table is “just” a flat slab of wood on legs until you try building one at industrial scales, and then you realize that a flat slab of wood on legs is but one consideration amongst grain, joint stability, humidity effects, varnishes, fastener types, ergonomics, and design aesthetics. And this is the case for literally everything in the universe.
Including cancer.
But up until just [...]
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First published:
October 26th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w7eojyXfXiZaBSGej/cancer-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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