Here’s the deal:
- Reality isn't linear but systems behave linearly around operating points 
- it’s turtles all the way down and the turtles all have Jacobians on their backs
- Convexity is a hammer, everything is a nail
- Linear Transformations Rule Everything Around Me
- Everything is a convexity problem if you squint hard enough 
- Yes, everything

If you think of it in this frame of mind, and extend it further:
- Engineering is the art of lying to reality to make it solvable
- Art is the structure to lie about reality even when it’s unsolvable

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks

engineering: simplify & lie, so you can do it, build it
art: tell the truth even if it breaks you completely

Think about it this way, if information is the resolution of uncertainty, then ultimately an engineer's required betrayal of the world is the exact action it takes to make it tractable - that's the worldview you have to swallow in engineering school. And that's probably also why an artist's necessary faithfulness to the world, even when it costs everything.

I think it's the balance: 
- learning when to betray reality for tractability
- learning when to remain faithful to reality for expressibility