Greg Egan's Orthogonal series, for the weaker criterion. Most of the characters are scientists, you get to see them struggling with problems and playing with new ideas that turn out not to work. That's not the only rationalist aspect, though: [about the future inhabitants of a generation ship] "They won't feel as though they're falling, they'll feel the way they always feel. Only the old books will tell them there was something called 'falling' that felt the same." [while having to fast] "She... began [working through] the maze of obstructio...
To make the underlying math more explicit (if still handwavy), I see the thickness as the derivative of the parent with respect to the child; this is why we can multiply them together along a path (the chain rule). This perspective helps us see a few important things:
- The thicknesses change over time and are based on marginal importance rather than absolute importance. Sometimes they change due to random external factors, but often due to your own actions - if Danslist now has a truly excellent network thanks to your efforts, improving it further may not
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