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This reminds of of that one time when I was on a date with a girl from the history department who somehow bemusedly sat through my entire mini-lecture on compar
by thadt 1y ago
This reminds of of that one time when I was on a date with a girl from the history department who somehow bemusedly sat through my entire mini-lecture on comparing infinite sets. Twenty years and three kids later, she'll still occasionally look me straight in the eye and declare "my infinity is bigger than your infinity."
- dcchuck 1y agoThis is the type of romcom I'd watch ;)
- reverendjames 1y agoYou want to watch him and his wife?
- muragekibicho 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- halfmatthalfcat 1y agoThere’s something called “not giving a fuck” that works in those situations. The crux of it though is you need to “know thyself” or you’ll be forever your worst critic and enemy.
- HPsquared 1y agoAlso you're being open and readable to the other person. You're not being deceptive or putting on a show, which is usually what rustles people's jimmies.
- KeplerBoy 1y agoYou would not. People love hearing about the things you care about as long as you can present them in interesting ways. Try it!
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI wouldn't go on Hinge if that's the default experience.
- fknorangesite 1y agoIt is not, of course.
- MontyCarloHall 1y agoGet this incel trolling out of here. No, all that would happen if your date weren’t interested in math/whatever you’re into is a polite message “I had a great time but I don’t think we have much in common” and leave it at that.
- DonHopkins 1y agoHis oddly specific fear of being "plastered on a bunch of facebook new-york-dating-experience groups" sounds like women have had to warn each other about him before, and it probably wasn't about his interest in math, but something much worse.
- grues-dinner 1y agoFittingly this is roughly the same vintage as your relationship then: https://youtu.be/BipvGD-LCjU https://youtu.be/BipvGD-LCjU
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wvlia5 1y agoOnce I taught the binomial coefficient formula to a girl after sex
- huflungdung 1y ago[dead]
- mbork_pl 1y agoThe Fibonacci sequence might have been more appropriate.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoNot if they were using contraception.
- grues-dinner 1y ago"So you see if the chance of pregnancy is constant per..uh..encounter, and given that the condom just broke, we're on a spectrum from the chance of a second round roughly doubling the odds but the overall chance is still small, or it doesn't make much difference anyway. Either way, the numbers say we should go again."
- dominicrose 1y agothat's not too abstract, I can see how this formula applies to sex I tried using if for this: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/12 https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/12 but computer said no
- btilly 1y agoI'm curious. Did either of you ever notice the implicit philosophical assumptions that you have to make to come to the conclusion that one infinity can be larger than another? Despite the fact that this was actively debated for decades, modern math courses seldom acknowledge the fact that they are making unprovable intellectual leaps along the way.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Despite the fact that this was actively debated for decades, modern math courses seldom acknowledge the fact that they are making unprovable intellectual leaps along the way. That’s not at all true at the level where you are dealing with different infinities, usually, which tends to come after the (usually, fairly early) part dealing with proofs and the fact that all mathematics is dealing with “unprovable intellectual leaps” which are encoded into axioms, and everything in math which is provable is only provable based on a particular chosen set of axioms. It may be true that math beyond that basic level doesn’t make a point of going back and explicitly reviewing that point, but it is just kind of implicit in everything later.
- btilly 1y agoI guarantee that a naive presentation doesn't actually include the axioms, and doesn't address the philosophical questions dividing formalism from constructivism. Uncountable need not mean more. It can mean that there are things that you can't figure out whether to count, because they are undecidable.
- godelski 1y ago> I guarantee that a naive presentation doesn't actually include the axioms But you said "modern math courses". Are you now talking about a casual conversation? I mean the OP's story is that his wife just liked listening to him talk about his passions. > Uncountable need not mean more. Sure. But that doesn't mean that there aren't differing categories. However you slice it, we can operate on these things in different ways. Real or not the logic isn't consistent between these things but they do fall out into differing categories. If you're trying to find mistakes in the logic does it not make sense to push it at its bounds? Look at the Banach-Tarski Paradox. Sure, normal people hear about it and go "oh wow, cool." But when it was presented in my math course it was used as a discussion of why we might want to question the Axiom of Choice, but that removing it creates new concerns. Really the "paradox" was explored to push the bounds of the axiom of choice in the first place. They asked "can this axiom be abused?" And the answer is yes. Now the question is "does this matter, since infinity is non-physical? Or does it despite infinity being non-physics?" You seem to think mathematicians, physicists, and scientists in general believe infinities are physical. As one of those people, I'm not sure why you think that. We don't. I mean math is a language. A language used because it is pedantic and precise. Much the same way we use programming languages. I'm not so sure why you're upset that people are trying to push the bounds of the language and find out what works and doesn't work. Or are you upset that non-professionals misunderstand the nuances of a field? Well... that's a whole other conversation, isn't it...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gnulinux 1y agoWow, I did a very similar thing on the first date with my now wife. I explained the halting problem, and Godel's incompleteness theorems. We also talked about her (biomedical) research, so it wasn't a one sided conversation. I think dominating on a first date is a risk (which I was mindful of) but just being yourself, and talking about something you're truly passionate about is the key.
- charlieyu1 1y agoI taught my wife simplex algorithm for linear programming and she forgot all of it Turns out I’m neither good in maths nor teaching
- pfdietz 1y agoWay back then, calculus was a culture war battleground. Bishop Berkeley famously argued the foundations of calculus weren't any better that those of theology. This sort of thing motivated much work into shoring them up, getting rid of infinitesimals and the like (or, later, making infinitesimals rigorous in nonstandard analysis). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst
- Waterluvian 1y agoThis is the sweetest thing ever and I hope you feel those butterflies even now sharing this story.