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1. myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 03:08:38 JST myrmepropagandist

   What is something you learned in math that made you loose a sense of innocence-- knowledge that you can never unlearn that changes the world forever?

   • Luke Kanies (lkanies@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 03:08:31 JST Luke Kanies

     in reply to

     • Dawn Ahukanna

     @dahukanna @futurebird I have a chemistry degree, and basically every year, they’d do an intro lecture saying that same thing:

     Chem 101: “here’s how stuff basically works”
     Organic chemistry: “yeah, everything we said about bonds and atoms was a lie. “
     Quantum chemistry: “hah! You believed that crap? None of that stuff even exists! At best it’s a probability distribution.”

     It was harrowing, but also freeing and a lot of fun.

     I wish programming was taught the same way.

   • Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 03:08:36 JST Dawn Ahukanna

     in reply to

     @futurebird philosophy of maths undergraduate course where I left furious & depressed at the same time.

     Main gist of that lecture was, “ everything you know, been taught & ever learned, is just plain wrong, in error & it is ,at best, an approximation, with integrals between human perception and actual full reality.

     Furious - so I’ve spent my whole life in school up to this point learning what exactly?
     Depressed - This is shite! How on earth, stars & universe am I gonna figure things out?

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 03:08:37 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     For me? That rational numbers are outnumbered by irrational numbers-- to such an extreme degree they are functionally as sparse as the integers-- or even the powers of ten.