Time-Translation Symmetry in Fields of Study

Time-translation symmetry is what some system has when it stays similar as you move through time. As an example, we believe that the laws of Physics have this. If you went back in time centuries or millennia or longer you'd find the same fundamental constants and behaviour.

You can easily come up with many other fields that have this property. Mathematics is a quick example. You can also come up with other fields that don't have this property. Literature is a straightforward example because you can't talk about how some structure is interesting in Literature except in terms of the time it's in.

Fields with TTS have a huge advantage in advancement: the present snapshot of best knowledge is sufficient to describe the field. Hypotheses that failed experiments etc. are useful for you to progress but you can start with some snapshot of now and get going.

Fields without TTS have a massive handicap. Every practitioner is forced to replay the learnings of the field and occupy the time when the field was in some state in order to comprehend some field object's value. This results in these fields eventually becoming History of X fields rather than X fields.

To use the example of Literature, most study of literature involves also studying it in a historical sense - with the value of the literature being tied to the moment. This means most Literature programs become History of Literature programs.

But the need to re-run the entire replay-log has an advancement problem. Every practitioner spends some O(n) time reading the past before they get going. In contrast, a tiny fraction of time is spent on things like the Corpuscular Theory of Light or on Aether theories.

This resulting slowdown causes these fields to stop advancing slowly. This slowness among the best practitioners causes a compression of the range between best and worst - which always causes the worst to flood something.

It's therefore a very good idea to avoid fields without time-translation symmetry if you're good at things. And if you're bad at things, you should find those fields since it'll be hard for someone good to show you up.