this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] LemmysMum@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Anything not objectively true is a lie, anything beyond our best determination is false.

But that does us no good if you can't work within the context of the necessary framework as knowledge becomes useless as nuance is lost.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It has some irony that someone is arguing for an inaccurate value of Pi in a meme post which is all about Pi being used inaccurately, while complaining about "little lies".

If you want to talk about this opinion piece: Rayman himself says they are using many more digits, because two digits is not enough. Pi is also used in many more fields than astronomy. So to assume "all we ever need is two digits of Pi" because astronomers consider that to be enough "for most calculations" seems a bit short-sighted.

For example, if you repeatedly multiply a value by something with Pi, over many million iterations, you absolutely want more accuracy. The example given in the article is very specific. It's a nice insight, but no basis for generalization.

In the end, if you insist this simplification is sufficient, you're making the very point I was making: Sometimes, we don't need the full complexity of reality, but "a little lie" is fully sufficient and much easier to understand and deal with. However, students should understand that's not the full story, probably never will be.

[–] LemmysMum@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well I'm sure our grade school kids need all of them... Like I said, if you can't stay within the relevant context your nuance becomes irrelevant.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like I said, if you can’t stay within the relevant context your nuance becomes irrelevant.

Just for the record, the previous comment consisted of just the link when I replied to it. All the other text was edited in afterwards.

It feels a bit sketchy to edit a comment after it was replied to, then responding to the reply with "Like I said, ...".

[–] LemmysMum@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago

It was edited within a minute of me posting it, you didn't respond to it that quickly, that's down to your instance not mirroring the edit.