Aperiodic >>>> Periodic.

Erwin Schrodinger was the first one to describe the characteristics of the genetic material in his seminal book "What is life?" (Which is an excellent pop sci read). He describes that an aperiodic crystal is necessary to store the complexity of the human footprint in a single molecule( The information required to make the entire body is within the first cell, from which all of us are born from "The fertilized human egg"). A periodic crystal, which physicist are so happy with, since it's easier to solve, does not store a whole lot of information.

I started thinking of an analogue of this idea with cultures. Coming to America, has given me the opportunity to interact with people from different cultures. A specific culture is like a periodic crystal to me, it encompasses minimum information and is highly comprehensible and fits in nicely to our understanding of the world. There is a lot of priors that go into building up a particular culture and the point of maximum understanding of the world comes from taking knowledge from different cultures and building a coherent picture. This is harder and also much richer than any particular culture. Thus, an aperiodic prior. This particular stand up by bill burr, sparked me to think about this fascinating idea.