2 of Disks: Time Complexity
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In computing, disks are the part of the computer that can’t be abstracted away. If you throw a computer out of your window, the realm of disks will pertain to its impact with the ground. The second card in a suit embodies that suit’s ideal, before that ideal is forced to engage with the messiness of energy and reality. Paradoxically, the two of disks is the least solid and real card in the suit of solid reality. In computing, the two of disks represents time complexity: the theoretical lower bound to the speed of a computation. The time complexity of an program is a theoretical result about a hard reality.
We know that sorting a randomly shuffled list back into perfect order simply can’t be done faster than a certain bound. To understand that bound, we have to abstract away almost everything about sorting and shuffling and order and time. Whether or not we understand the bound, it is real. It doesn’t matter if your computer can sort a list if it’ll take longer than the age of the earth to get the result.
What are the limits of your system? Do you have a language for understanding them? Have you accepted them?