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What did you get told as a child that you realised was a lie as you got older? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Except when it comes to Math. Math is absolute, as long as you ignore statistics.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

as long as you ignore statistics

See? Conditions

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

Gotta ignore infinities too. The axioms they're based on are highly controversial.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

And ~~irrational~~ imaginary numbers. I mean the numbers make sense, but it’s not like we can intuitively understand sqrt(-1).

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

You're thinking of imaginary numbers. Irrational numbers are real numbers that have an infinite number of decimal places and don't repeat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Lol. Yes. Don’t drink and Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Your example is a complex number. An irrational number would be Pi or sqrt(5)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Nah even statistics is perfectly logical and right, but not because truth is absolute (there may be such a thing, but we definitely don't have access to it in that case. [At this time?]), but rather because math defined there to be a way in which all you derive from it is 'absolutely' true. It just might be 'absolutely' true in a system that isn't ours, or isn't useful for answering anything we want to ask...