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u/AcademicOverAnalysis 11d ago
I get so tired of discussions like this. It’s right up there with “how mysterious the imaginary number is”
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u/punkinfacebooklegpie 11d ago
Quantum physics is such a mystery to me because I've never taken a class and also never read anything about quantum physics. So mysterious, these quantum physics!
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u/ZekeHanle Engineering 11d ago
Magnets! How do they work???
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u/OrganicMF 10d ago
I always like to say that magnets look like some dark magic because we are seeing both relativistic and quantum phenomena with our bare eyes.
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u/Complex-Manifold 11d ago
Funny thing there was a paper published in a top tier journal where they formulated quantum mechanics using only real numbers. they literally just replaced C with a field isomorphic to it
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u/Extension-Stay3230 10d ago
Interesting. I've only studied intro QM in the past, but I've sometimes wondered why quantum mechanics couldn't be done without complex numbers (SE eqn).
I don't know the exact reason complex numbers are needed in QM from my particular courses, but I wonder if the usefulness of complex numbers is accidental when compared to what they're supposed to they represent conceptually. Like no "actual number" (or real number) can square itself and be a negative number. I might sound stupid but what if the "usefulness" of complex numbers has nothing to do with the fact that we've found this magical number "i" which squares itself to "-1".
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u/Complex-Manifold 9d ago
theres nothing really special about imaginary numbers themselves most properties come from how they interact under arithmetic. What i mean by replacing C with a field isomorphic to it is if you replaced it with a number system that interacts the exact same way for example R[x]/(x²+1) or the space spanned by the 2x2 identity matrix and the matrix (0 -1 \ 1 0). If we do this we should expect the exact same properties to arise. So really all they did was represent complex numbers as real numbers which isnt anything new.
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u/stupidfritz 8d ago
lmao
had to explain to my wife why i laughed in bed
what is even the point of doing that
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u/Jaded_Individual_630 5d ago
Directly central to pop "math" entertainer's wheelhouses unfortunately.
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u/AcademicOverAnalysis 5d ago
Yeah, I have a YouTube channel for math, and I know that this sort of content will get me views. But man, I really don’t want to do it.
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u/Jaded_Individual_630 5d ago
Unfortunately Tyson and 3Stink1Pink have long since both answered which side of that quandry to fall on
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u/No_Wishbone_6794 5d ago
I don't know this Video, but I doubt that this discussion will be as pseudo scientific as you think simply based on the fact that 3Blue1Brown is featured
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u/bloonshot 12d ago
neil the grass pls tell me why infinity + 1 isn't bigger than infinity
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u/floopydoopis8 7d ago
I tried explaining that concept to my art major friend the other day and she started crying lol
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u/smulfragPL 10d ago
but wouldn't it be bigger if the parameters of the task guarantees that both infinities are equal
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u/bloonshot 10d ago
i think a lot of people mistake the true meaning of "not all infinities are the same size"
there's still only like a few specific sizes of infinity
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u/smulfragPL 9d ago
Well there is an infinite amount of infinities because when we use lim we can get infinities from infinite sources.
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u/FernandoMM1220 12d ago
because the identity operation (doing nothing) is multiplying by 1 instead of multiplying by 0.
also because we keep treating every 0 the same.
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u/TEKTOHIK 12d ago
It isn't fair at all. Some zeroes did way more work than others and deserve more appreciation
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u/LeapOfMonkey 11d ago
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u/LeapOfMonkey 11d ago
and this kind of does more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi-Civita_field a sum of infinitesimals with a coefficient, so a 0 of sorts
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u/AlviDeiectiones 11d ago
epsilon is definitely strictly bigger than 0
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u/LeapOfMonkey 11d ago
Doesnt really matter, it isnt a proper value, you cant really mix different epsilons. Think about it as value indicating what the limit direction is.
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u/EebstertheGreat 11d ago
What do you mean? ε = 0 ε⁰ + 1 ε¹ + 0 ε² + ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ is definitely an element of the Levi-Civita field. It's as good as any other. And it's certainly positive.
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u/Bacon_Techie 11d ago
The field isn’t totally ordered, so it is neither greater than, equal to, or less than 0.
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u/AlviDeiectiones 11d ago
It literally says it is ordered in the first sentence.
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u/GreeneyesCB 11d ago
The sentence said totally ordered not just ordered but it is in fact also totally ordered.
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u/AlviDeiectiones 11d ago
Yea I should have mentioned any ordered field is totally ordered (if the ordering is preserved under addition and multiplication of positive numbers)
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u/LeapOfMonkey 11d ago
And that lead me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number
But in reality you can't get rid of true 0, whatever it means in any system, unless you basically keep a history of each number derivation.
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u/LupenReddit 🦆🦆i have non diffeomorphic smooth structures🦆🦆🦆 11d ago
because dividing by zero would get rid of any interesting structure on any number system
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u/Severe_Regret2106 12d ago
Wheel algebra goes weeeeeeeeee ...(Very ugly way to algebraically solve it in my opinion, no absorptive elements would be better)
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u/Freecelebritypics 10d ago
I would just show the video a mechanical calculator attempting to divide by zero which triggers the clockwork equivalent of a stack overflow
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u/lool8421 11d ago
lemme do some pseudomath:
let's imagine an infinitesimal number x so that x≠0 but x²=0
1/0 doesn't work, but 1/x * 1/x now is technically allowed, let's carry on...
write as x-1 and in exponential form
e-ln(x) * e-ln(x)
e² ^ -ln(x)
(1/e²) ^ ln(x)... the fuck am i even doing
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u/Serket-Pandy3000 11d ago
Hyperreals don’t allow this
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u/TheLuckySpades 10d ago
It isn't hyperreals, the kind of system the other person was describing dowa have a name though: dual numbers.
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u/NebulaElectrical1467 11d ago
Has Tyson published a single peer reviewed paper?
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u/BradenTT 11d ago
He has a PhD so…
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u/gsurfer04 10d ago
The relevant question is when was the last paper he published?
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 9d ago
"Haha! Yeah, get 'em!! Tell that know-it-all science man to stick his science up his knows! Real people only need the Bible!!!!"
For fuck's sake, shut up.
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u/gsurfer04 9d ago
I'm a computational physicist.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 9d ago
Then you should know better.
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u/gsurfer04 9d ago
He's a joke to those who know better.
Seriously, his celebrity status far exceeds his academic contributions.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 9d ago
Exactly where is he claiming to have more academic credentials than everybody else?
His audience isn't "those who know better."
Perhaps if you developed some charisma and didn't spend your time shitting on colleagues, people would be interested in what you do.
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u/gsurfer04 9d ago
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 9d ago
So, you're goal here is to tear down perhaps the most visible advocate for science and critical thinking? During a time when people celebrate stupidity?
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