Reminds me of my favorite math essay: "When is one thing equal to some other thing?"

It's a great question, much deeper and more interesting than it seems. The essay suggests thinking in terms of isomorphisms (relative to the structure you care about) rather than equality in some absolute sense, and I've found a fuzzy version of that to be a really useful perspective even in areas that can't be fully formalized.

https://people.math.osu.edu/cogdell.1/6112-Mazur-www.pdf

I jumped to a similar conclusion right away and popped over here to comment only to find you have beaten me to the punch. I use to keep a work wiki page of common problems the team encounters over and over again.

Years ago, I stumbled upon the "idea" was already debated in other fields long before programming. Lumpers and Splitters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters

"Ambiguity is the enemy", as a rule of thumb, has helped me

Or non binary. How much are these the same and how.

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