this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 87 points 5 months ago (3 children)

You laugh now, but just wait 3 years until this morphs into the next right-wing cult conspiracy theory…

[–] blackbelt352@lemmy.world 44 points 5 months ago (1 children)

God I hate that this is an entirely plausible scenario.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Nah, I'm pretty sure they avoid maths like it's dark magic

[–] blackbelt352@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And there you have the conspiracy theory. Now all we need is to somehow tie it back to The Jews(tm)

[–] 0ops@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

I heard that Albert Einstein knew some math...

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[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 36 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)
[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Look at what mathematicians have been asking your respect for.

"Hello, I would like i potatoes"

How can we trust science when they say things like that?

[–] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 57 points 5 months ago (4 children)

You think one imaginary number is crazy? Just wait till you learn about quaternions. One real number and 3 imaginary numbers forming a four dimensional coordinate system. It's the basis for quantum mechanics and most video game engines. Who thinks of this shit?

[–] sparkle@lemm.ee 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Quaternions? Basis of quantum mechanics? Pretty sure that's not right at all. A lot of games use them for rotations in place of rotation matrices though I suppose.

[–] 0ops@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago

Iirc, using quaternions for rotations let's you avoid "gimbal locking".

[–] linja@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Quaternions are not the basis for quantum mechanics. Biquaternions have some applications in quantum field theory, but there are many areas of quantum mechanics where there's no need or space for anything above complex.

[–] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oops my bad, it's been a while. I thought the Hamiltonian used quaternions, but I guess that's just complex numbers.

[–] linja@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

The Hamiltonian using Hamilton's numbers? Now I think about it it is a bit silly that two entirely separate yet highly propinquitous concepts have such similar names. Physics really went downhill once humans started writing it down.

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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 48 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like someone’s developing a…

( •_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

C o m p l e x

[–] Iapar@feddit.de 5 points 5 months ago

YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH

[–] gmtom@lemmy.world 44 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bro, if you don't like imaginary numbers then just don't imagine them?

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I tried that but then i went and got their siblings j and k. They're threatening to burn down my plane. What do I do now?

[–] lath@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Add another axis to your game plan.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 22 points 5 months ago

Also mathematicians making them entirely self-consistent then using them in regular maths until we're all forced to deal with them and accept them as normal

Instead of just admitting they were wrong

[–] Snowclone@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But isn't it fascinating that NASA used theoretical math that didn't have an intended use by the mathmaticians that developed it years ago, but it ended up working well with orbital entry calculations?

There's a lot of theoretical math that ends up being very real.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

Quaternions? They were used as intended - to represent rotation.

[–] cows_are_underrated@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Actually it really looks like physic needs imaginary numbers to accurately explain reality.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-physics-imaginary-numbers-math-reality

[–] egeres@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This was one of the points of contention with the quantum revolution of the beginning of the 1900's, schrödinger came up with the equation, which fitted like a glove for a lot of scenarios, but it had an imaginary component, which baffled a lot of people since it could imply reality uses such numbers at a fundamental level

[–] Papergeist@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Imaginary" is just a misnomer. Descartes basically ran a smear campaign against them.

[–] egeres@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's actually a good point I had never considered! In a way you could consider that "negative numbers are imaginary as well"

[–] Papergeist@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

And that's never something I considered. You can't see a negative amount of apples. Must be imaginary!

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

What's really screwy is you can force light to only travel as a evanescent wave. It's completely undetectable without a second interaction, but light must transmit energy using the purely imaginary part of the complex wave.

The imaginary component definitely has some physical meaning, it's not just a useful mathematical trick.

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[–] uis@lemm.ee 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Mathematicians dug up quaternions. Double the imagination. They aren't Complex for comprehention.

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Imaginary numbers are math cope for when you're too cool to just use two numbers.

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[–] profdc9@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Little known fact: the imaginary numbers are the algebraic closure of the irrational numbers.

[–] g_the_b@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is it not real numbers? eg x² + 1 = 0

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Rℯℯℯℯℯℯℯℯℯ

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[–] linja@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] lud@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago (10 children)

Don't read into it too much.

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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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.

That, there, is the story of pretty much all maths. There were occasional mentions of zero and debates about whether it's a number or not in old Europe, it only became widely accepted once base 10 became popular. And people still can't agree whether the natural numbers contain it!

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[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Jujutsu Kaisen characters pulling yet another 'binding vow' out their arse instead of learning to fight better.

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago

It's a long standing shonen tradition of ass-pulling

[–] egeres@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Fucking pathethic, just admit you're all wrong, they even made a bullshit-number-generator to keep making up new stupid-useless-made-up-numbers that serve no purpose at all in any discipline of science, it's disgusting

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

“Taravangian was here”

Taravangian the next day: “What was I thinking?”

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Mmmmmm lies

[–] Hjalamanger@feddit.nu 7 points 5 months ago

And instead of admitting you can not solve a problem prove that it's impossible to solve it

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