Comments on: how to be crazy and get paid for it

By: Yu-Ain Gonnano

Yu-Ain Gonnano — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:29:23 +0000

By: Linoge

Linoge — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:37:38 +0000

Now that is definitely true… some of the most beautiful abstract art I have stumbled across on the cortex actually stemmed from graphical representatives of seriously jacked-up math.
I guess consuming copious quantities of crack while scribbling numbers and characters on a sheet of paper does have its uses after all…

By: Yu-Ain Gonnano

Yu-Ain Gonnano — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:27:00 +0000

See, it is that kind of made-up nonsense that drives a concrete-thought guy like me right up the wall.
Yeah, that was my mind blowing moment akin to your probability class. OK, yeah, I understand it, but WTF?!
“Well then of course not! But it sure sounds neat, does it not!”
Well, nothing in the real world has a length (or width) some multiple of the sqrt(-1), but when you put’em in fractals, they do make some really pretty pictures.

By: Linoge

Linoge — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:50:53 +0000

See, it is that kind of made-up nonsense that drives a concrete-thought guy like me right up the wall.
“Sure, it does not work when you talk about a rational number, but once we throw ‘infinity’ into the mix, everything works out just fine!”
“Well can you demonstrate it?”
“Can you find me something of infinite density?”
“No.”
“Well then of course not! But it sure sounds neat, does it not!”
*headdesk*
I know, I know, a lot of the things that our current society is built on is based on mathematics that cannot really be “demonstrated”, but a lot of the explanations for that math seem a lot more like workarounds than logical progressions (at least to an applied engineer like me).

By: Yu-Ain Gonnano

Yu-Ain Gonnano — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:24:50 +0000

Rule #1: Weird things happen at infinity.
For instance, there’s the same number of even positive integers as there are positive integers.
But how can that be, the even positive integers are only half of all positive integers?
Well, yes. In any *finite* set of them. But remember Rule #1. Weird $h1t man, Weird $h1t.
Two sets have the same number of things in them if you can find a 1-to-1 relationship between each and every thing in each set.
Set “adult” (Cat, Dog, Man, Woman) and Set “Child” (Kitten, Puppy, Boy, Girl) are equally sized sets because you can link Kitten to Cat, Puppy to Dog, Boy to Man and Girl to Woman (You can link them other ways too, but it’s only necessary to find 1). There’s no item *unused* and there’s no item *reused*.
Question: Do the set of positive integers and the set of even positive integers (a subset of positive integers) have the same size?
Intuitively we would say no. The set of positive even integers is 1/2 of the positive integers. However, finding a 1-to-1 relationship between the positive integers and positive even integers is easy: take any number in the positive integers and double it. No integer is left out and none are reused so therefor they have the exact same size.
The same thing can be done for the odds. So you can take the set of all positive integers and split it into two groups, the evens and the odds, each of which has the exact same size as the original.
Told ya. Weird $h1t man.
And don’t even start with fractals and non-integer dimensions

By: Linoge

Linoge — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:51:49 +0000

Reputo: Ok, that one hurts my head too. Especially with the “painter’s paradox” explanation.
Weer’d: Even those kinds of things I can abstract-ize to a point where I can understand it… Little tiny machines, and whatnot. But cloning a ball without the introduction of additional materials or energy? That breaks my noggin.

By: Weer'd Beard

Weer'd Beard — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:01:03 +0000

Good friend of mine is a microbiologist. The shit he works with you can’t even SEE, let alone handle. That’s too removed for me.
Hell the Mrs. is a CHEMIST. She talks about all these crazy machines, that I KNOW how they work, but let’s face it with stuff as small as a benzine ring, or a hydrocarbon chain, it might as well be magic.
This sort of goofy intellectual masturbation I have zero patience for.

By: Reputo

Reputo — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:12:32 +0000

My favorite was Gabriel’s horn. Finite volume, but infinte area.