John-Paul Flintoffhttps://pluralistic.net/2026/03/19/jargon-watch/
“language isn't math (which is why double negatives are intensifiers, not negators)”
Phosphenes@johnpaulflintoff @pluralistic
I once tried to work out a 'Spanish negatives' multiplication system, where EG:
-2 * -3 = -6
so square_root(-9) = -3 and so on.
It's all fun and games until you multiply negatives times positives and try to come out with symmetrical answers.
But it does make one wonder if our language had been different, maybe our math would have been too.
Khleedril@Phosphenes @johnpaulflintoff @pluralistic The reason you couldn't make it work is because there is only one way to multiply two negatives, and that's how we do it.
Happy to be corrected...
Bernd@khleedril @Phosphenes @johnpaulflintoff @pluralistic it's a bit more complicated than that. The definitions of multiplication and addition are somewhat arbitrary, but the ones that we use are consistent and turned out to be extremely useful to describe physical phenomena and make accurate predictions. Other definitions are possible, and even necessary when dealing with objects other than simple numbers.
@hopfgeist @khleedril @johnpaulflintoff @pluralistic
Imaginary numbers are an open admission that our math is not entirely consistent. If you can get rid of imaginary numbers, you have resolved an inconsistency.
@Phosphenes @khleedril @johnpaulflintoff
Imaginary numbers are completely consistent, which just means that there are no internal contradictions. Consistency is not the same as "common sense" and it does not mean that all concepts that can be mathematically expressed must have an intuitive interpretation in the tangible world.
Imaginary numbers are completely consistent, which just means that there are no internal contradictions. Consistency is not the same as "common sense" and it does not mean that all concepts that can be mathematically expressed must have an intuitive interpretation in the tangible world.
@hopfgeist @khleedril @johnpaulflintoff
The square root of a negative number provably does not exist. Imaginary numbers both do and do not exist.
@Phosphenes @hopfgeist @johnpaulflintoff In the realm of natural numbers, neither -1 nor 0.5 exist. In the realm of real numbers, the square root of -1 does not exist. In the realm of complex numbers, all these things do exist.
@Phosphenes @hopfgeist @johnpaulflintoff @pluralistic They are an admission that the number system is incomplete--until you get to complex numbers when you arrive at a formal algebra, in which all algebraic problems have solutions.