this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Computer programming books ... Lol we don't print them any more, they'd be obsolete before hitting the shelves.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago (9 children)

Mathematics ^teacher^: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won't pass.

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[–] [email protected] 154 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (15 children)

Religious Texts: .. that text was written by some half literate guy living in a desert who heard tenth hand folk stories from his community from people who had died about a hundred years before his time, mixed in with legends, myths and fairy tales that are thousands of years old ... but it's all true because it came from God, believe it or you will burn in hell forever.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You, a loser Christian, reading from a 2000 year old book of morality fables.

Me, a sophisticated Scientologist, reading from a 70 year old Sci-Fi/fad health trilogy.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Maybe L. Ron Hubbard was a time traveller that had already started everything 3,000 years ago and decided to restart it all again 70 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago

Or maybe he just copied the successful indoctrination practices of existing religions...

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

The hypocrisy of any religious book being the words of their all powerful master while they give themselves the option to cherry pick which rules they wish to follow is astounding.

It’s one of the first things that convinced kid me that it’s all made up bullshit to control gullible people.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 days ago (1 children)

As a kid I thought Pythagoras was silly for making a math cult. Now that I'm older I get it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's an interesting angle on it, can you say more? Sorry to be obtuse.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Well Pythagoras lived during the Greek era. Buildings like the Temple of Artemis were the greatest projections of power and grandeur the world had to offer at the time. Those great structures would've dwarfed anything seen out in the country. The only way those buildings could ever be erected is with the help of mathematics.

Furthermore mathematical truths are about as true as anything can be in the world. A triangle's angles are always perfectly in harmony for instance. Way back when, when the world was much darker and more chaotic, those mathematical truths must've seemed like a great light in the darkness.

Mathematics is applicable truth.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Programming: that book was printed a month ago, and it's already obsolete.

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[–] [email protected] 101 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Electron was discovered in 1897. If you own a textbook on chemistry which is older than that, put it up on Ebay in the antiques category.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Newton lived in the 17th century, so if you got a textbook older than that give it back to the museum

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Web development: Oh, that textbook is obsolete. It was written last year before Angular v18 was released.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago

*French SpongeBob voice

"2 hours later"

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh that book is outdated. That's the second edition, you need the third addition to complete the one math problem I am basing your entire grade on for the course.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

"Why yes I do happen to also be the author of the textbook for this course, why do you ask?"

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Wrong for physics. Models to describe reality don't magically become wrong just because a model with better predictive power is discovered. Most old models are special cases of newer ones.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Yeah, Newton wasn't just a science bitch who is wrong, sometimes. His equations are the special case of General Relativity when acceleration is very low. Which is the world we live in.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Theres a lovely scene in Star Trek where Picard is captured, then finds an exposed wire on the cell panel. He takes it and begins tapping out prime numbers, to show to the aliens’ mathematicians that they’re sentient and capable of thought, independent of language.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 days ago (9 children)

But math does change, and it has a lot in the last 1000 years.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Math doesn't change, we just learn more about it.

The mathematical knowledge we had thousands of years ago is still true, and it always will be.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago (8 children)

Math doesn't change, we just learn more about it.

Isn't that true of almost all the sciences?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 days ago (6 children)

The difference is that if something is proven mathematically it's 100% certain and will not change. In other sciences you may be taught things that later turn out to be flat out wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 days ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

Science is validated by the new information replacing the old. Al-Khwarizmi worked out numbers so we don’t have to,

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Computer Science:

Oh, that textbook is outdated. That was before NodeJS 22.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Software Development: You bought a textbook?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

"Oh, that blog post is obsolete. It was written before version 1.87.0d.20250304.nightly"

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago (2 children)

"It's okay, I'll just ask ChatGPT."

Asks ChatGPT about new feature.

ChatGPT makes up a completely fictional answer that sounds plausible given the state of the repository two years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Easy as

I/II= ,V

(OK, that was confusing, it's I/II= .V in barbaric` )

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] can 25 points 5 days ago

On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] ayyy 12 points 4 days ago (4 children)

My favorite way to connect people with academia is pointing out how recently zero was invented because even the most reluctant “I don’t know math” person understands zero these days.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This was made by someone who doesn't understand any of it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (5 children)
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[–] throwawayacc0430 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Reality: The universe was spontaneously created last thursday and there is no way for you to disprove it.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I love that Eratosthenes was able to estimate the circumference of the earth with the amount of math we had in his era. Meanwhile, modern flat-earthers are still making me want to vomit.

I used to see fractals in the shadows on LSD. I couldn’t think of the word “fractal,” and told my friend, “You know, that thing in math?” And he said to me, “When you trip you see math?!” Fun times. To be a teen again.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago

That $300 stack of the cheapest thin paper was last semester. The online code you need for class is void, and the questions won't match the answer key.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Math is a thought game with axioms as rules. It’s much more stable since the rules are “self-evident”.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

The really funny part is the other two are also just math.

The fabric of reality is woven from math, and that's beautiful.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've got a pet theory that a hypothetical alien species' music would be more recognizably similar to humans' than their biology would.

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