5 ms·

> It is hard to have the patience to chase down the consequences of their ill-fated definitions, though. Of course it's hard because in day to day life, even f

> It is hard to have the patience to chase down the consequences of their ill-fated definitions, though. Of course it's hard because in day to day life, even for the vast majority of STEM practitioners, the nuance of the proof that 0.9999... is 1 is not of much utility. Whenever one sees a 0.999[... to however many digits] one can safely assume it's less than one or perhaps more realistically "almost 1". To say 0.999... with the very specific detail that the 9's go on forever is actually a strange thing to say and outside of most people's experience. There are simple enough proofs of this that normal folks who paid attention in high school can follow, but I think it has to be framed more as a clever brain-teaser than as a proof.

gspr 7y ago
> Of course it's hard because in day to day life, even for the vast majority of STEM practitioners, the nuance of the proof that 0.9999... is 1 is not of much utility. Oh absolutely. I'm not expecting STE(no M this time!) practitioners to necessarily be aware of why 0.999…=1 in their daily lives, but I do expect them to have encountered enough situations in their field of expertise where scraping the surface using shallow intuition and gut feeling lead them wildly astray. I'm therefore surprised that they're willing to deny this basic fact to the face of mathematicians. The ones I've interacted with also don't happen to be the types that'll start arguing Anatomy 101 facts with a heart surgeon at a bar, but somehow arguing over basic calculus with mathematicians is fine.
- gowld 7y ago
  > start arguing Anatomy 101 facts with a heart surgeon at a bar Well, there's this: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy