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Infinite Suffering

⁨652⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨fossilesque@mander.xyz⁩ to ⁨science_memes@mander.xyz⁩

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/3ca91fa0-870e-4938-85a6-148bc81b919f.jpeg

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Comments

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  • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    One must imagine Maths grads happy

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    • anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      i

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      • chknbwl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        sqrt(-1)

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  • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The answer is obvious. You need 2 trolleys to take both tracks.

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    • kamiheku@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING!!

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      • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Look at this genius here, optimizing the solution… 😂🤣

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    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      People = good

      People = good

      Why is that so hard to remember?

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      • MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        People = bad?

        People = bad!

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        • -> View More Comments
    • kinsnik@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      well, with 2 trolleys it is the same amount of suffering as with 1

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  • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’d to top case since the number of peoole killed would converge to -1/12 meaning no suffering

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    • muix@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I thought that was for the sum of all positive integers (1+2+3+…). The sum if ones converges to -½.

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      • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Image

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    • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That sum is wrong: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIIjLr6vUA

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  • rbn@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I go for option 1.

    In all programming languages that I know, integers have a maximum number. E.g., in C that’d be 2,147,483,647. After that, you would run into an overflow, resulting in either…

    • a crash (train stops, no more deaths),
    • death count suddenly turns negative (all people previously killed are suddenly alive again and even new people are generated out of nowhere) - until we reach the next overflow when people disappear and start dying again
    • or - if it’s an unsigned integer - death count resets everytime we reach the maximum limit

    So compared to option 2, we have a chance of stopping the death count. And even if the train keeps running, we have essentially option 2 but the same people only die very rarely. If we assume a cycle of 1 death per second and an integer boundary of 2,147,483,647, that’s just one death every 68 years per person involved. Seems more fair to me compared to 100 people constantly dying over and over again.

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    • mattd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      So the Zapp Brannigan approach?

      Image

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    • Wojwo@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or is it like a Y2K death trolly and when the overflow happens the universe doesn’t catch the exception and things get weird. Like suddenly any number can be divided by 0.

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    • fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah okay but by that logic you’d also have to quantize time and the suffering would end either way in a finite amount of time.

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    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They used database to store integer…

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  • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ah, but eventually the trolley breaks down, and in the case of the reincarnating circle, you end up with zero deaths (but a whole lot of Therapy)

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  • stinerman@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Where I’m from Calc 2 is integrals. That wasn’t so terrible. It was Calc 3 (vectors and series) that was the hard one.

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    • kogasa@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      At the universities I went to, Calc 2 was integration, sequences and series, then Calc 3 was multivariable. They really pack all the harder parts into 2.

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      • someacnt_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I thought this was taught in high school…

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      • stinerman@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        We were on quarters, so we had calc 1-4. Makes sense that Calc 2 was rough if you were on semesters.

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    • CodexArcanum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I managed until university when I left calculus and entered “Linear Algebra” and man, I really don’t like matrices.

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      • stinerman@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I made it through. My degree is actually in math. 15 years ago, I used to know what an abelian group is!

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      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I found linear algebra super hard until I learned it a second and then third time, from different angles. I found it harder to understand when it was taught in a pure maths context, but coming at it from the applied side made me go “oh, so that’s why that’s like that”

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    • BakedCookie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My multivariate calc was a separate course from regular calc 1/2/3

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  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Arguably these are different amounts of bad even before considering this: We generally consider existing preferable to non-existence to some extent when suffering isnt taken into account, consider that if you murder someone quickly and painlessly in their sleep without waking them, they dont really themselves suffer from it, but people will still find you to be a murderer, and would object to the idea that you might do it to them. In the top example, killing the people actually kills them, but in the lower example, it arguably doesnt, because the experiences of the people involved never actually cease, therefore, the lower paths seems to me to be preferable because you supposedly get equivalent amounts of “suffering”, but different amounts of time that people spend in non-existence.

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    • Johanno@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Morally speaking people could argue that torturing immortal people is worse.

      However legally speaking to you don’t kill them and therefore the immortals are preferred.

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  • RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Cant you just take people from the track with reincarnating people? They might have to die a couple of times, but thats nothing compared to infinity

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  • BreadOven@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think the ones in the loop become Cenobites.

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  • j4k3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The abominable billionaire loop makes me happy

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  • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well their heads aren’t on the tracks and they’re immortal, I bet we could rig some kind of device to make them total praplegics and then work on a direct neural interface so they can use computers while they lay there endlessly having their bodies painlessly trisected.

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    • qaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or we could just untie them

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      • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        nah

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  • SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hell couldn’t be real because humans would eventually fetishize any pain input and dump buckets forever.

    Some webcomic I saw back in the earlier days of the Internet

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    • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Allegedly it isn’t a place where you are tortured, but instead a state of permanent depression from being cut off from God. Just the former is easier for pop culture to portray.

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  • Xyprus@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Also, Option 1 would essentially mean the end of the human race. Assuming the rate of killing is faster than the birth rate it would mean everyone dies soon

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    • Incandemon@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I mean, no? Its given in the question that option one is an infinite amount of people. Its not limited to just the existing human race.

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  • frauddogg@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is the kind of trolley problem that makes Cenobites.

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  • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Isn’t Stockholm Syndrome fake?

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    • BobGnarley@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Actually upon looking it up, there is some suggestion that it is fake.

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    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No?

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  • 5oap10116@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    People really complaining about Calc 2?

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  • kogasa@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It can be, usually for college credit though

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  • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Isn’t the top case just how things are now?

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