Yes, exactly. That sense of “secret of the universe encoded in a proof” is what I was trying to put words around. I know the jump from RIP to consciousness is huge; I’m not claiming a formal bridge, more that the shape of the constraint feels like an echo of something lived. A kind of resonance between mathematics as a language of limits and consciousness as the negotiation (or compilation?) of them. Your PhD work & courses with Candés as grounding makes you uniquely able to sense when leaps are being made. Thanks for your comment!

If it feels opaque, you’re in good company. One of the core ideas I work with is that part of what lets us “stay ahead” cognitively is embracing density: not because every idea must be immediately digestible, but because wrestling with dense models (math, theory, abstraction) builds the muscle. You don’t need to grasp every LASSO coefficient to feel the weight of what constraint means. And yes — Pop-Tarts are more than fine (those Hariboesque gummies recently dropped at Trader Joes is that for me.) We all need something simple now & then when the brain’s been stretched.

Mystical is the right word. Maybe the danger is in mistaking the shimmer for a conclusion, when really it’s an invitation to keep looking.