• ccunning@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    67
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

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

  • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    46
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    5 months ago

    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
      link
      fedilink
      Cymraeg
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      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.

    • linja@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      5 months ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          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.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      The general concept is called Spinors, Quaternions are just one representation. Here’s a great video on them. In physics they’re using them because they’re necessary (video explains), in computer graphics we’re using them because they’re algorithmically convenient, very cheap to compute and ignore that whole half-spin thing. It’s one of those instances where it’s cheaper to compute useless information and then throw it away as opposed to avoiding to compute it.

      They’re also absolutely impossible to deal with when authoring stuff, as in rotating things in Blender, it’s just a representation on the backend. Quaternions would avoid gimbal lock but when authoring you really rather deal with that than a 4-dimensional hypersphere.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    5 months ago

    Sounds like someone’s developing a…

    ( •_•)

    ( •_•)>⌐■-■

    (⌐■_■)

    C o m p l e x

  • morrowind@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    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

      • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        5 months ago

        They did, linear algebra and vector calculus are a thing, but complex numbers have certain properties that you don’t get with vectors and that are quite useful and worth studying.

      • Arrkk@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        For various math reasons you only get consistent systems with 2^n dimensions, so after complex you get quaternions with 4, then the next one that works is 8, then 16, etc. They become less useful because you lose various useful features, like you lose commutabiliy with quaternions (eg ab != ba), and every time you double you lose more things.

  • Dasnap@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    5 months ago

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

  • Hjalmar@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    5 months ago

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

  • egeres@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    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

    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Our theories fit reality only to some extent. Which is why they patch them with dark unicorns, even though it doesn’t help much.

    • egeres@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      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

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      5 months ago

      This is why some observers have noticed that religion, ‘the God of the gaps’ especially, is dying and losing any use or meaning, leading to less metaphysical thought in everyday life, that math and physics especially now use metaphysical thought is the primary tool of new understanding and discovery. Which is bringing it back into everyday life.

      • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        For some it’s the stock market instead of physics. Human brains are wired to invent patterns and meanings in places where there aren’t any.

  • linja@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 months ago

    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 x3 - 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.

      • linja@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          5 months ago

          Sometimes it’s better to just accept that you don’t get the joke and move on.

          • linja@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            5 months ago

            I might not find a joke funny, or I might not have the necessary context to appreciate it; that’s “not getting” a joke. If it’s possible to have too much context to appreciate a “joke”, it’s at the expense of people who know more than the audience.

              • linja@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                5 months ago

                It might seem harmless, but the purpose of a joke is to draw a distinction between those who get it and those who don’t, fostering a sense of community. In this “joke”, the in-group is people who don’t know something; the community ideal fostered there is that knowledge is undesirable, that anything that seems unintuitive to the uninformed mind is inherently ridiculous. The “joke” has no effect if it doesn’t do this. Entertaining the idea without challenge is dangerous.

  • profdc9@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    5 months ago

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

    • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      5 months ago

      Is this some joke I’m not getting? Cause yes, real numbers are the closure of irrational numbers, but imaginary numbers are just isomorphic to them.

      • CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        You’re thinking of topological closure. We’re talking about algebraic closure; however, complex numbers are often described as the algebraic closure of the reals, not the irrationals. Also, the imaginary numbers (complex numbers with a real part of zero) are in no meaningful way isomorphic to the real numbers. Perhaps you could say their addition groups are isomorphic or that they are isomorphic as topological spaces, but that’s about it. There isn’t an isomorphism that preserves the whole structure of the reals - the imaginary numbers aren’t even closed under multiplication, for example.

        • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          You’re right, I mixed it up with the complex numbers being isomorphic to R^2. Thanks for clearing it up!

          Love btw how I get downvoted for an honest mistake.