“Data as particles and mean field theory abound” by Max Hennick

LessWrong (30+ Karma) · Oct 21, 2026 · 34m

Audio note: this post contains a lot of mathematical notation. We narrate the simpler formulas and flag the complex ones, so you may want the original text to hand.

Epistemic status: Much of this post is a reframing of known results using slightly different tooling. The framing of "data as particles" has been conceptually useful for me so it seemed useful to share. Some steps in the derivations are stated and handwaved rather than writing out in full where the steps are generally standard. The dynamical mean field perspective presented later is part of a broader research agenda, and a paper…