why do i hate that artist thing that people keep posting on my facebook so much? why am i such a jerk?

well it's not *wrong*. it's just not even wrong.

it's basically the "infinite monkeys" thought experiment, yeah, but it's basically turning an unprovable mathematical statement into a quasi-religious atheist tenet

basically

lol Neil S

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/58033_442768779143059_155773623_n.jpg
"heh, the guy's got a point" NO HE DOESN'T!!

helpful highlighting though, kept me on track

Suspect this d00d was not really all that surprised.

Who has ever said that spoons make people fat?

Pi poster makes me wonder how terrible Aronofsky's film would seem today

I think the Aronofsky film worked because it's not really about "the mysteries of Pi" but about the intensity of the kind of person who gets obsessed with "the mysteries of Pi"

its a film that fucking loves science

if you were to interpret the constant pi as encoded video, eventually you would see the entire series of Faces of Death, in all digital video formats that have ever existed or will exist

truly the devil's constant

it's basically the "infinite monkeys" thought experiment, yeah, but it's basically turning an unprovable mathematical statement into a quasi-religious atheist tenet

― ampersand cooper black (elmo argonaut), Tuesday, April 2, 2013 3:38 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's provable in the mathematical sense tbf, but not empirically, which is i guess what you mean. and "it" (pi contains *everything*) is true of every irrational number. there an infinite number of these. there is nothing special about pi.

Infinite non-repeating doesn't necessarily equal "every possible number combination" though, does it? I mean you could have an infinite non-repeating decimal that just went like this: 1.121122111222111122221111122222111111222222 etc.

infinity contains everything except infinity is a limit, not a number

yea, i suppose that's what i was trying to get at -- you can assert that your dog's DNA is somehow encoded into the digits of pi but good luck trying to prove it. xps

http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

Pi search engine

Dawkins is right tho, there's no place for magical thinking in the man's world of fucking loving science

http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif

no but it's really not necessarily true that it contains every possible number sequence just because it's infinite and non-repeating

much in the same way that there's no reason to believe monkeys would eventually type shakespear. They could just wind up typing "kkkkkkkkk" forever.

racist monkeys

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3tn5wj/

however, it does apparently contain the famous "boobies" number sequence (55319009)

nah i think infinity implies that everything that can happen would happen, every possible member of a set would appear in an infinitely sized set. you could have a set of less than 10 digits which was infinite i guess but if there's an infinitely big set which can contain all 10 digits then logically it would contain every possible combination of those digits. except "contain" becomes kind of meaningless in that context, i think because as i say you can't really treat infinity as a number

xp uh that says "googiess"

damn, my pin for my debit card is in the first 20 million digits of pi, time to change it

xp rong flip it upside down

here's the rub: so ANY given string of digits MIGHT appear in an infinite non-repeating sequence, but so what? there's the fallacious, superstitious conclusion that this MEANS anything -- that it proves that the world is full of connection and meaning (and that math is awesome and way better than religion, obvs).

it would be an equally compelling piece of evidence that NOTHING is meaningful if you framed it a different way.

well yeah I think we all agree on that part

it's additionally silly because pi is derived from a wholly man-made, abstract concept (the perfect circle)

I was thinking that it wouldn't necessarily contain every number sequence too, but I think that's down to intuitively thinking it temporally like the monkey theory rather than in terms of a proper but not-yet-defined infinite. But for me the real arbitrariness is in implying that ASCII or bitmap code is of some cosmic significance somehow, though maybe if I come up with some decimal language in which the first 100 letters of pi means 'ILX' I will become God or something.

Infinite non-repeating doesn't necessarily equal "every possible number combination" though, does it? I mean you could have an infinite non-repeating decimal that just went like this: 1.121122111222111122221111122222111111222222 etc.

― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Tuesday, April 2, 2013 3:58 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc irrational are not *just* non-repeating. they have other properties.

but yeah, elmo otm.

obvs I mean the first 77 letters of pi. xp

ianam but i think a 'normal' number does contain every finite sequence of integers, but it is not known if pi is normal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number

god wikipedia maths articles are the worst

woah this thread just took a turn

yeah well who wants to be a normal number anyway, I like to do random things sometimes

xp rong flip it upside down

actually it is u who is rong because you meant to type 5318008

unless of course you were talking about the "boobless" variant, which was 55378008

5318008 618

there are BOOBIES and there are bOObIES, know what I'm sayin?

its a stoner thought experiment guys i dont think anyone is really taking it that seriously

i mean, you can maybe get alarmed if the us govt starts passing legislation based on the fact that the last thing you see before you die appears in pi or people start taking pi-based medicine but

omg you're right, shut the thread down guys

turns out Facebook image macros are nbd

ha

ANY given string of digits MUST appear in an infinite non-repeating sequence, unless i understand infinity as meaning something different from u guys. since it's non-repeating it continues until every possible string of digits is expressed ie eternity? u just have no access to it. (oh lol i see platonic forms.)

there are different kinds of infinity, apparently

if anything tho that meme is surely an argument for god not atheism since the atheist only believes in pi as it is observed and the theist believes the infinite shares infinitude w/ the divine.

much in the same way that there's no reason to believe monkeys would eventually type shakespear. They could just wind up typing "kkkkkkkkk" forever.

― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Tuesday, April 2, 2013 11:05 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah monkeys experiment assumes monkeys would type randomly when really they would all just write the kkk newsletter