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What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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You ever see a dog that's got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it's never going to make the connection.

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.

Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (36 children)

Infinity. We're simply too dumb to grasp it. Example:

3*(1/3) = 3/3 = 1
3*(1/3) = 3*(0.333...) = 0.999...
0.999... = 1

That "..." means "it continues to the infinite". And yet when you show this reasoning to people, they keep "looking" for the last 9, to claim that 0.999... is not the exact same as 1.

And that applies to all humans. You might counter it rationally, you might train yourself to recognise "it's infinite, so theoretically it'll behave in a certain way", but you don't grasp it. I don't, either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (30 children)

Why would it be the same as 1, wouldn’t it always be 0.9 unless you round up at some point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

No, because that "some point" will never happen. There is no last nine to round up, because if there were a last nine, they wouldn't be infinitely many.

There are many different proofs of this online, more or less rigorous.

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