Good God are There a Lot of Morons on Digg
June 21st, 2006 by MarkI’m so shocked by the sheer amount of ignorant, yet argumentative idiots on Digg that I can barely even muster up a real rant. There’s an article by a math teacher explaining the common confusion his students have with the idea that 1 = .9999… repeating. He went to great lengths to explain very clearly why this is true, and wrote what I thought was a good article. What kind of response did I expect from the supposedly “techie crowd” at Digg? Well, I figured I’d see a few comments saying stuff like, “Hey, good explanation,” or “Duh…” How naive I was.
Instead, reading the comments was like going through a pile of essays written by a ward of lobotomy patients. Comments ranged from wack-ass idiotic unsupported claims such as:
TheRonald by TheRonald 1 hour ago
If your postulate was correct Euler Method and all methods based on it would be wrong. So I’m going to have to say no .9999 does not equal 1.
to half stoned musings:
joeshlub by joeshlub 1 hour ago
.99999… Isn’t a number. Thats like saying infinity isn’t a number. Its an innacurate representation. .99999…. is a decimal approximation. Case closed. .99999 doesn’t equal one because .99999 is an approximation. So all of this stuff with using fractions doesn’t apply, because 8/9 DOES NOT ACTUALLY EQUAL .8888….. because it is an approximation.So simply put, infinity isn’t an actual number, its a concept. .9 repeating isn’t a number either, its just a concept, specifically an APPROXIMATION. if it could really exist, it perhaps would be equal to one. But try writing it. just like infinity, its impossible. Concepts don’t equal numbers. Case Closed. Try refuting that. Seriously, don’t dig me down unless you can refute it. And if you can, At least reply, I’ll be happy to hear about it.
to people who are convinced that a series can’t be infinite:
KineticFlow by KineticFlow 8 hours ago
…
He also has an ignorant attitude against those who criticize his opinions, saying that ..
“…sum of an infinite series (go talk to some math professors, and see how far you get) or to deny the very existence of the number .9999…. ”
What? SUM of an infinite SERIES? Series, by definition, is the sum of a sequence of terms.He’s suffering in the world of real numbers (not even irrational, but rational numbers).
I wonder what he would say to his students when he has to teach complex numbers.
In the end, though, the posters I pity most are the ones who were actually trying to reason with the mob that is Digg.
benhocking by benhocking 1 hour ago
@psiit: Actually, you’re just reinforcing its consistency. You can’t stick a 1 after an _infinite_ series of 9’s. And, 8.9999… is, in fact, 9.
In the end, it was ae3145 who summed it up best:
ae3145 by ae3145 16 minutes ago
Hi.I have a math degree. These are my conclusions of the day: Digg for the quick news, Slashdot for the commentary.
This is high school stuff guys, don’t embarrass yourselves. If you want something to think about, consider what e^(pi i) = -1 actually means. Google it, do some research, learn, enjoy.
Take care,
g
There are idiots on Slashdot, too. At least their comments get modded into oblivion, though. At Digg, it’s rare for even 10th of the visible comments to be well informed. The article I’ve been talking about has been taken down from the main page due to its nature, which was deemed “controversial” by the confused intellectual equivalents of field oxen who run Digg, but you can find it at http://digg.com/links/.9999999=1
:
June 21st, 2006 at 6:16 am
comments on popular, unmoderated, sites quickly reach for the lowest common denominater. I rarely read the digg comments any more myself.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:36 am
Believe it or not, there is moderation on Digg. It’s just worthless. Joeshlub’s comment was at +41 diggs.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:18 pm
It looks like the same article is ranking well on Reddit as well (currently at 13th place, even after a day). Here are the reddit comments. I just glanced through them. Here is one that got moderated way down:
Overall, in glancing through the comments it seemed that the Reddit crowd was fairly good at moderating the idiots way down. I’m wondering whether the Reddit crowd is a little smarter than the Digg crowd. Or maybe Reddit has a better moderation system? Maybe Reddit is new enough that the layfolk haven’t found it yet.
June 21st, 2006 at 2:01 pm
This one is my favorite:
HAHAHA!!! Oh my!
I think the main problem with doubters is that they don’t realize that even integers have infinite precision, ie 1 = 1.000… . Infinite precision does not mean not-a-number. *sigh*
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Something about forums brings out the stupidity.
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Matt,
I think Slashdot does so much better of a job with moderation due to a few reasons:
I looked at the thread on .999… vs. 1 on Reddit, and I have to agree with you, Matt. The comments, while not as interesting or informative as Slashdot comments often are, weren’t nearly as bad as the one’s on Digg. I have no idea why, though. Reddit also offers unlimited moderation points, and offers them to anybody who signs up. How does karma work on Reddit? Do you know?
June 24th, 2006 at 6:06 am
I think half of the people who seem to be idiots are in fact trolls. That is to say, malicious idiots.
June 26th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Hi Mark,
Here is what Reddit has to say about Karma:
So, it looks like the formula is probably unknown. I believe that a user gains or loses karma based on the moderation on submitted links and comments. Unlike slashdot, each vote weighs equally, even though the karma of the voter may vary.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Oh, I’m not talking about how a user gets karma. I’m talking about how karma affects the prominence of a comment.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:01 am
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March 31st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I think the answer is as x-> infinity the number will approach 1