• Liberalism [he/him,they/them]
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    4 years ago

    If you want a situation where 2+2=5 that has a practical application, the easiest is one I'm going to steal from Carr: Imagine numbers from 0 to 1 refer to the time over the course of a 24 hour day; 0 is midnight, 0.25 is 6 am, 0.5 is noon, and 1 is midnight again but the next day.

    If all you care about is what time it is and not what day, because idk you need to catch a train that runs every day at the same time or something, then 0=1 because they're both midnight, in fact all whole numbers are equal.

    So 2 + 2 = 5 = 6 = 7 but none of them are equal to 0.6.

    • Gorn [they/them,he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Holy shit.

      Numbers are really, really cool.

      Haha, fr, thanks for this. This was really interesting to think about! It's interesting, because it feels like a novel use for numbers, but it's also basically just how we count days on a mundane basis! Huh!