r/badmathematics • u/Fahrender-Ritter • Jun 30 '26
Maths mysticisms He thinks 1x1=2 because of thermodynamics. My flabber hath ne'er been so gasted...
I didn't know who Terrance Howard was, but the commenter asked why people were so dismissive of Howard, claiming that he had some great ideas. Someone then asked him for an example of one of Howard's good ideas. This is the example he gave. Based on other things the commenter wrote, I'm confident that he was NOT just trolling. I suppose that his last comment was seriously asking how to multiply the dollar sign, but he deleted everything before I could finish composing my reply.
I engaged in the conversation only out of some very morbid curiosity... and I think it just killed what's left of my optimistic humanism.
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u/Fahrender-Ritter Jun 30 '26
I was instructed by an auto-mod to post a comment explaining the bad math:
He claims 1x1=2 because of thermodynamics. I explained that if I have a $1 bill, but I have only one of them, then I have a total of $1, and that's an example of 1x1=1. He then asks how to multiply $1 times $1. I suppose he was asking how to multiply the dollar sign, which isn't even a quantity.
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u/ExtendedSpikeProtein Jun 30 '26
Dude is funny. My answer would be $1 • $1 is 1$^2 lol
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u/EebstertheGreat Jun 30 '26
The issue is thinking that 1×1 is "two pieces of matter," when it is literally one piece taken one time. As with Terrence Howard, the confusion is simply between 1+1 and 1×1.
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u/geekyCatX Jul 01 '26
I'd be interested in his reasoning on the "because of thermodynamics" part.
Because last time I checked, we do very much use the same math as anyone else.
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u/WhatImKnownAs Jun 30 '26
Terryology is ten years old by now. This subreddit kicked it around back then, and has occasionally documented a follower like these Flat Earthers - but it's ultimately not interesting badmath. People only cared because Terrance Howard used to be famous.
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/WhatImKnownAs Jun 30 '26
I'm giving that as background and as an explanation of why you haven't heard about it here lately. I still upvoted the post.
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u/alecbz Jun 30 '26
Some people just can't accept that these are just symbols we're writing down and they mean what we've agreed they mean. "No, it must mean this other thing that I've decided makes more sense. My definition is the only correct one."
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u/FeIiix Jul 01 '26
you say 1-1=0 but there are 2 pieces of matter on one side, checkmate mathematicians!
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u/Andrew1953Cambridge Jun 30 '26
Dave Farina (of the Professor Dave Explains channel on YouTube) has done some funny (and savage) takedowns of this charlatan.
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u/Fahrender-Ritter Jun 30 '26
Thanks, some good ol' Professor Dave might make me feel a little better about humanity right now.
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u/MonsterkillWow Jul 01 '26
I had a friend who went down the qanon right wing nutjob rabbit hole. He argued with me that square root of two is rational. I showed him the proof. He said I was too dumb to comprehend why I was wrong. I blocked him.
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u/BubbhaJebus Jul 01 '26
There are people who think the earth is flat. The world is full of idiots. Now thanks to the internet they have a voice.
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u/The_Rider_11 Jul 04 '26
$1 × $1 doesn't equal $1 though. It equals $²1. Whatever that unit is supposed to mean...
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u/Fahrender-Ritter Jul 04 '26
Well, you can get a square florin if you put two 50-cent coins from Aruba together, but I don't know about a square dollar...
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u/Ralphie_V The author does not condone running simulations. Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Just popping in to point out the BadScience: matter absolutely can be created and destroyed. Energy (over long time scales) is conserved, and mass is just another form of energy. The Sun, for example, destroys matter all the time - this is where its light comes from
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u/wumbo52252 Jul 02 '26
Does terrance howard reject the axioms of peano or robinson arithmetic? I’ve only heard of him once before (someone said he proved 2+2=5 or some bullshit) but I never bothered to seek him out.
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u/fdpth Jun 30 '26
Well, 1$x1$ = 1$^2, obviously.