514
submitted 5 months ago by drayv@lemmy.world to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
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[-] four@lemmy.zip 28 points 5 months ago

What if I think that all of the numbers are uninteresting? Does that make them all interesting? But doesn't that, in turn, make all of them uninteresting?

[-] water@lemmy.world 28 points 5 months ago
[-] samus12345@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago

c/SyndromeDidNothingWrong

[-] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago

Suppose that's why it's called a paradox

[-] 69420@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago
[-] Mohamed@lemmy.ca 14 points 5 months ago

Here's a nerdy math way.

Assume that some numbers are not interesting. Let n be the smallest non-interesting number. Since n is the smallest number that's not interesting, it is interesting.

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago
[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago

"Noteworthy" and "interesting" aren't synonyms.

Gad, you've got me doing it!

[-] samus12345@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

"Remarkable." "Fascinating."

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

You may think you're a Trekkie, but did you know that the first Star Trek parody show was a one season flop called "Quark?" It was about an interstellar garbage scow, and it had a crew including two clones.

https://alchetron.com/Quark-(TV-series)

[-] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

1730 seems pretty uninteresting to me, and that hasn't changed after taking a few minutes to check if there's anything that makes it less than dull.

[-] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago

1729 is a very interesting number.

1730... is not.

[-] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

So, I picked it by choosing 12^3 + 2. I wanted to start with something easily factored (power of 12) and not too small, but not interesting because of its factorization. And I wanted it to be even, since odd numbers tend to have funny quirks. So a simple +2.

What's amusing is that I did this before looking at the Wikipedia page. According to that, the original number that inspired this paradox was 1729. So just by happenstance, I picked one integer higher than the original "uninteresting" number. Which I guess arguably makes 1730 interesting now (though admittedly not for mathematical reasons).

[-] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

And so it becomes true.

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

the interestingness of numbers is a field that fulfills Laplace's equation, with the constraint that 0 is infinitely interesting, and the interestingness converges to zero for n -> infinity.

[-] __nobodynowhere@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago
[-] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Four is bad luck in Japanese superstition, because its pronunciation ('shi') is the same as the word for 'death'.

[-] RandomVideos@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago

But if 2 numbers arent interesting, they wont become interesting from not being interesting because there are multiple of them

[-] Cliff@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

It's kind of interesting that there are 2 of them.

this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
514 points (100.0% liked)

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