this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
482 points (96.7% liked)

Science Memes

15630 readers
2594 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
all 47 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] yesman@lemmy.world 46 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't get it. Is "tree" some kind of notation?

[–] salarua@sopuli.xyz 97 points 2 months ago (3 children)

TREE is an extremely fast-growing function in set theory. TREE(1) equals 1, TREE(2) equals 3, and TREE(3) equals a number so large that its lower bound easily dwarfs Graham's Number.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 months ago

its lower bound easily dwarfs Graham's Number.

Yo you don’t gotta throw shade on Grahams number like that, it’s doing its best

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Well, that escalated quickly.

[–] teft@lemmy.world 57 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Yes, TREE(3) is larger than a googolplex or even graham’s number.

[–] koper@feddit.nl 28 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why do I always feel like I need a PhD to understand even the first paragraph of Wikipedia articles about math. Is that just me?

[–] match@pawb.social 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

yeah where's the Simple English Wikipedia article for Graham's number

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Graham’s number is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to Graham’s number.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 7 points 2 months ago

Go get your PhD and write one yourself!

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What about our friend TREE(Graham's Number)

[–] teft@lemmy.world 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Numberphile did a video on TREE(g~64~) so you gotta go bigger.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] teft@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] felsiq@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Needs more recursion
Also is your username from stormlight archive?

[–] teft@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Also is your username from stormlight archive?

:)

[–] felsiq@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Justice for phenadora 😭

[–] teft@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago
[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

TREE(yomomma)

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

Haven't seen them in a while. Hope they're doing well

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That article is not comprehensible to most people

[–] teft@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P6DWAwwViU

Here is a Numberphile video that describes how large a number we are talking.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 5 points 2 months ago

Thanks, I get it now!

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I am one of them. I still can't get past the Hotel paradox. To me an infinite number of guests cancels out an infinite number of rooms.

Infinite guests = infinite rooms Infinity + n = infinity To say the bus of unbound guests could just move into infinite rooms seems to give a property of rooms without limit that is not shared with the original infinite guests.

The original premize states the hotel is full. Because the only thing that matches infinite rooms are infinite guests.

Apparently I am very stupid. My sister was right all along.

[–] ftbd@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are different "kinds" of infinity. For example, there is an infinite amount of natural numbers, and there is an infinite amount of real numbers. Still, natural numbers only make up a tiny part of real numbers, so while both are infinite, the set of real numbers is bigger. Hilbert's Hotel is an analogy meant to convey how to deal with these different notions of infinity.

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago

Not really. The guests move to a room with double the number, freeing up an infinite number of rooms.

So the change is from natural numbers to even numbers, freeing up odd numbers. Those infinities are the same, but you can still do this because infinities are weird.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Infinite hotel has infinity guests. You have all the guests move down 10 rooms. Rooms 1-10 are now free. Zero to Infinity and 11 to infinity are equally infinity, since numbers extend into infinity.

In the same manner if you have one set of infinite guests occupy all the even numbered rooms, you will still have an infinite number of rooms open, because the set of all odd (and even) numbers extends infinitely. You could have the first set of infinite guests take each hundredth room (100, 200, 300, etc), then the next set take 99, 199, 299, etc. in that way you could fit 100 sets of infinite guests.

It just illustrates that infinity is not an easily intuitable concept.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What doesn't make sense to me is infinite rooms and infinite guests and is full. You ask everyone to move down 10 rooms, why is 1-10 now free? You had infinite guests too, wouldn't more filled rooms appear?

Or Is infinite only infinite (undefined) on the upper end, but defined on the lower? E.g. 1.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can define the start of an infinite series, just not the end. (Except as ∞ or -∞). You could also have an infinite set that extends both ways.

0 to ∞ contains an infinite amount of numbers. But so does 11 to ∞.

More filled rooms do not "appear", the rooms just go on without end. These is no "last" guest who moves into some previously unoccupied room. It's just... endless. Infinite.

It really only makes sense in abstract. Our minds aren't built to deal with infinity.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Thanks. My mistake was to view infinite as stretching without end in both directions. Today I learned. Thanks.

[–] bratorange@feddit.org 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

man hes gone have to do a lot of walking again... Offtopic: The funny thing is TREE(3) is an absurdly long distance, independent of the physical unit. Even TREE(3) times the planck length is unimaginable long, as the ratio between a meter and the planck length is absolutely neglectable against such super large numbers.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 22 points 2 months ago

It's so large that the number of digits it has is too large to represent, and the number of digits in that number is too large to represent, and so on for a number of times that is also far too large to represent.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

So the only way it's worth taking about it is in memes right? Right?

[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Math meme ... it's a math meme!

[–] yum@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is math related to science?

[–] Droechai@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

I don't think so, science deals with reality and math are just floating around

/joke

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago
[–] Sibshops@lemm.ee 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Let's say you have to move to the infinite room. How can someone check out of the hotel?

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 34 points 2 months ago

There is no infinity room, but there is an infinity pool

[–] Tai@lemm.ee 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can check out any time you like

[–] Sibshops@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The only issue is that if I have to travel to an infinite distance to the lobby, I'll never check out.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry, you can never be put in a room with an infinite number, only an arbitrarily large one. That's the idea of the hotel; it has an infinite number of rooms, but every room has a finite number, since you can count forever without reaching infinity.

[–] Sibshops@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Whew, I was worried as the infinite passanger on that bus that I'd be put into an infinite room.

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

Just move halfway to the lobby, then again halfway to the lobby and...

...shit.

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

That's my secret, I'm always moving.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Just put a sign on the door telling everyone who comes there to go to the inverse wing. Or go set up in the inverse wing of the hotel yourself.

Everyone in the place is moving right along the infinite axis... But there's a whole empty wing of the hotel if you go left at the front desk.

[–] dechnically@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

legendary ball knowledge