this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
808 points (95.9% liked)
memes
10399 readers
1635 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know this is a joke, but wrong about what, exactly? I don't get it.
Also, and maybe this has something to do with the joke I'm not getting, the way complex numbers are motivated in school is a lie, and a stupid one. Mathematicians were perfectly comfortable with certain equations having no solutions; the problem was when their equations told them there were no solutions when they could see the solutions: the curve x^3^ - 15x + 4 crosses the x-axis, but Cardano's cubic formula gives up due to negative square roots. Imaginary numbers were originally no more than an ephemeral reasoning tool, and were only reluctantly accepted as entities in their own right because of how damn useful they were.
Don't read into it too much.
If I'm not meant to think about it until understanding emerges, then that means it should be immediately understandable without thinking. It is not.
It is, actually
The numbers are imaginary, thus theyte not real, thus the math magicians (not gonna undo autocorrect there) are wrong and refuse to admit it because they insist imaginary numbers are real
Don't apply actual knowledge of what imaginary numbers are for this exercise
Ok, so this is a "joke" which is only funny to people who do not understand the context, and moreover jump to insane, unsubstantiated conclusions rather than expending an infinitesimal measure of effort to understand something they haven't seen before. It's active mockery of the very concept of being open to new ideas.
No, the joke plays on the two meanings of "imaginary" - one being "made up, not real", and the other being the mathematical construct. The fact that you don't get it doesn't make it mockery, it just means you don't get it.