this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
264 points (96.5% liked)

Science Memes

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top 27 comments
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago

I really like the top right of the bottom blackboard...

"If we think very hard about it and break the fundamentals of math, logic and everything else we know about the universe, down into the most crucial and elemental components we may be tempted to come to the conclusion that 5 is - maybe somewhat simplified - just five 1s added together, basically."

I'm sure that there's probably more going on here... maybe...

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

5 = 5 = 4 + 1 = 3 + 2 = 3 + 1 + 1 = 2 + 2 + 1 = 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

Riveting stuff

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

5 = 5
= 4 + 1
= 3 + 2
= 3 + 1 + 1
= 2 + 2 + 1
= 2 + 1 + 1 + 1
= 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

Riveting stuff

Probably how you wanted your comment to look.

Markdown doesn't recognize a new line that isn't either double (for a full paragraph break), or preceded by a double space or a \.
Markdown is a stupid design, in my opinion. Can't even write \ without actually writing \\.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I find it interesting that PieFed renders that comment correctly - there seems to be a fundamental difference in how it renders markdown.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Markdown isn’t a set standard so the rules are made up and rendering is all willy-nilly

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think the bottom one may be some sort of combinatorics

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

You think correctly, extremal

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I really want to learn this stuff. Its looks so much like magic

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I wouldn't say it's magic. It's more like understanding how the forces that hold together our universe, and how we can harness these forces for our own gain.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Arthur C Clarke would like a word.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I have never heard of him before. I recognize my comment isn't unique, except in perhaps phrasing. Has Clarke said something within the same vein?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

The third law is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I merely meant that the beauty of mathematics and natural science was a form of magic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, with the people who keep misusing his quotes

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago

No, read more Clarke

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

To us as a species just barely out of the African steppes and valleys, it registers as some sort of secular magic, is like being mesmerized by a kaleidoscope or being at the center of a room full of mirrors.

To pull out extra dimensions from math, and be able to see how the tips of our new lines wave about. To zoom in on the Mandelbrot Set. To consider infinities nested within infinities. To see how Pi literally goes on forever. To notice how Pi seems to pop up nearly everywhere, including where it wasn't expected. To see prime numbers go in outward spirals and making intricate patterns that seem to comply with the golden ratio.

This is all very poetic, too. Maybe the purest kind of art. Surely the most rigorously rational, coming up with utterly unexpected and surprising structures, beyond our ability to imagine just with our senses at play.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wasn't sure if Feynman Diagrams.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Although a second look I agree they don't look right for that. Guess I should have taken more graph theory modules.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

More like a game. Advance in math learning new game rules and mechanics, that let you explore more of the game space.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

It used to get recommended all over Stack Overflow, but I did really love reading Göedel Escher Bach. That book taught me to see math as a game or, equivalently, as purely exercises in shuffling symbols around, with intent.

That shift in outlook really unlocked the fun in math for me. I learned about category theory through Haskell shortly after, and got into number systems and the surreal numbers and quaternions after that. There's so much neat math out there that the wall of calculus and linear alg really imposes right before all the good stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

So Maths is just like Dark Souls? You should put that on the box.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Not my experience as an actuarie. In college all the models and examples you learn are based on the platonic insurance company where everything works perfectly. In the real life, everything is a mess and the models hardly work and you had to crack workarounds for everything.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

looks like graph theory to me

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Some of it looks like topology. The curvy horizontal lines turning into curvy vertical lines are symbols relating to the Kauffman bracket, which belongs to knot theory.

https://encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Kauffman_bracket_polynomial