12 ms·

Because multiplication is just the number of times you add something to 0. If you add 2 to 0 3 times you get 6, if you add 2 to 0 0 times you get zero.

paganel 5y ago
I’ve mentioned in a comment above, I find nothing natural in doing operations related to zero i.e. related to nothingness, meaning that I see “adding” and “zero times” as an oxymoron (you cannot associate an action, “adding”, to nothingness, i.e. to “zero”).
- orobinson 5y ago
  Well by that logic if you have nothing, there's nothing you can do to it, so you will always have nothing, which reconciles quite nicely with multiplying numbers by 0 resulting in 0.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    Yep. Q: "How many times has it rained this week?" A: "It has rained zero times" Zero is a perfectly natural state.
    - Someone 5y ago
      I think humans could predict solar eclipses and solve quite a few differential equations before they managed to give that answer. The normal answer to that question was “It hasn’t rained this week” or even “What do you mean? It hasn’t rained this week”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta#Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta#Zero: ”The Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta is the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right, rather than as simply a placeholder digit in representing another number” That book is from around AD 628 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta)
      - spankyspangler 5y ago
        These are semantics, the concept of zero is still obviously everywhere in nature. "How many fish have you caught?" "None." Just because you reply none doesn't make it some wildly different concept than if you had replied with the word zero. In fact it's exactly the same thing.
- _Nat_ 5y ago
  > I find nothing natural in doing operations related to zero i.e. related to nothingness, meaning that I see “adding” and “zero times” as an oxymoron (you cannot associate an action, “adding”, to nothingness, i.e. to “zero”). Seems related to [this problem](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47783926/why-are-loops-always-compiled-into-do-while-style-tail-jump https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47783926/why-are-loops-a...). This is, a proper loop is like do while (condition) { // ... body .... } , where each iteration checks for the condition. But some folks might feel like a loop should always just do something first and then consider if it should repeat, i.e. do { // ... body .... } while (condition) From that sort of perspective, zero might seem kinda unnatural and contrived, sorta like if (!zero) { do { // ... body .... } while (condition) } In other words, the fallacy might in some assumption that doing something multiple times means doing it once and then possibly more times.
- InfiniteRand 5y ago
  I think historically there were a number of cultures who had trouble with the mathematical concept of zero, so it's not universal

paganel 5y ago

I’ve mentioned in a comment above, I find nothing natural in doing operations related to zero i.e. related to nothingness, meaning that I see “adding” and “zero times” as an oxymoron (you cannot associate an action, “adding”, to nothingness, i.e. to “zero”).

orobinson 5y ago
Well by that logic if you have nothing, there's nothing you can do to it, so you will always have nothing, which reconciles quite nicely with multiplying numbers by 0 resulting in 0.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  Yep. Q: "How many times has it rained this week?" A: "It has rained zero times" Zero is a perfectly natural state.
  - Someone 5y ago
    I think humans could predict solar eclipses and solve quite a few differential equations before they managed to give that answer. The normal answer to that question was “It hasn’t rained this week” or even “What do you mean? It hasn’t rained this week”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta#Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmagupta#Zero: ”The Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta is the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right, rather than as simply a placeholder digit in representing another number” That book is from around AD 628 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta)
    - spankyspangler 5y ago
      These are semantics, the concept of zero is still obviously everywhere in nature. "How many fish have you caught?" "None." Just because you reply none doesn't make it some wildly different concept than if you had replied with the word zero. In fact it's exactly the same thing.
_Nat_ 5y ago
> I find nothing natural in doing operations related to zero i.e. related to nothingness, meaning that I see “adding” and “zero times” as an oxymoron (you cannot associate an action, “adding”, to nothingness, i.e. to “zero”). Seems related to [this problem](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47783926/why-are-loops-always-compiled-into-do-while-style-tail-jump https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47783926/why-are-loops-a...). This is, a proper loop is like do while (condition) { // ... body .... } , where each iteration checks for the condition. But some folks might feel like a loop should always just do something first and then consider if it should repeat, i.e. do { // ... body .... } while (condition) From that sort of perspective, zero might seem kinda unnatural and contrived, sorta like if (!zero) { do { // ... body .... } while (condition) } In other words, the fallacy might in some assumption that doing something multiple times means doing it once and then possibly more times.
InfiniteRand 5y ago
I think historically there were a number of cultures who had trouble with the mathematical concept of zero, so it's not universal