Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles
Key topics
The mesmerizing world of Abelian Sandpiles has sparked a lively discussion, with commenters diving into the intricacies of these mathematical marvels. At the heart of the debate is whether Abelian Sandpiles are simply a type of cellular automata, with some arguing that they share similarities with Conway's Game of Life, while others point out key differences, such as scale invariance and commutativity. As commenters dissect the properties of Abelian Sandpiles, a consensus emerges that they possess unique characteristics, including fractality and stable criticality, setting them apart from other cellular automata. The conversation is filled with insightful exchanges, from observations on the sandpiles' behavior to links to related videos, making for a fascinating exploration of complex systems.
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3d
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Based on 29 loaded comments
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- 01Story posted
Dec 9, 2025 at 3:16 PM EST
24 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 13, 2025 at 1:59 AM EST
3d after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
16 comments in 84-96h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 14, 2025 at 4:26 PM EST
19 days ago
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The really weird part is that when I fetch https://eavan.blog/sandpile.js in Chrome, I see a "toppleAll" function near the top, but that same function is not defined when the script is fetched with Firefox.
"Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective", 2021 - Veritasium's apologia for clicbait titles and and thumbnails, and statement of principles.
Veritasiuk has at least stuck making soldi educational videos, as Mark Rober has let slip away his past effort to educate in addition to demonstrate his cool toys.
If something is not associative it is not a group. An abelian group is a group which is commutative.
In more advanced texts, they could simply say that a group is a moniod with inverses and could (by your reasoning, should) avoid specifying that groups are associative since this is a property of all monoids.
If I haven't defined mammals, I say that bats are warm blooded animals that produce milk for their young, etc., but if I have (or expect my readers to know what a mammal is) I can just say they are mammals.
1. Fill a grid with all 6s, then topple it.
2. Subtract the result from a fresh grid with all 6s, then topple it.
So effectively it's computing "all 6s" - "all 6s" to get an additive identity. But I'm not sure how to show this always leads to a 'recurrent' sandpile.
https://github.com/FredrikMeyer/abeliansandpile
This has causality backwards—being a group requires an identity element. You can't show something is a group without knowing that the identity element exists in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_sandpile_model