this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

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Posts and discussion about the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Hugo Award-winning author Zach Weinersmith (and related works)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/

https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith

@[email protected]

New comics posted whenever they get posted on the site, and old comics posted every day until we catch up in a decade or so

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

This is the plot of 1984 by George Orwell lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Did Terrence Howard write this?

[–] themeatbridge 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you think of "2" as a symbol that represents precisely the value 2, then yes 2+2 is always precisely 4. Except values are not always that precise. 2 might be 1.9999, or 2.0001. Those tiny deviations in value are usually not significant, but there are edge cases where the symbol 2 represents a value greater than 2.25 ot less than 1.75. In those situations, 2+2 could equal 5 or 3, respectively.

In math classes, we're expected to ignore this variation and just give the "right" answer. But the world is more complicated than that, and the more you know, the less certainly there is.

[–] toynbee 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So what you're saying is, 2+2=5 for extremely high values of 2?

[–] themeatbridge 2 points 2 weeks ago

That's a bingo.